


Flesh and Blood

by tolakasa



Series: Blood and Memories [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2006-11-02
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-28 22:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 37
Words: 49,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolakasa/pseuds/tolakasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vision leads Sam and Dean to Cleveland, where they run into a nest of Slayers, a rather witchy Watcher, and information they're not ready for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own none of these people.
> 
> Timeline: Consistent through "Chosen" for BtVS; through "Crossroad Blues" for Supernatural
> 
> Warnings: Mentions of rape and incest; nothing explicit.

_Between London and New York_

_Two Years A.S. (after Sunnydale)_

Willow woke in the night, somewhere over the Atlantic; moonlight trickled through the open window next to Alex's seat. She reached over the twins to close it.

Alex's eyes were open, but they stared blankly ahead, a side effect of the spells necessary to keep him calm. The airline staff had believed her story of autism, and gone out of their way to help her with them. She had all the paperwork—Buffy had readily signed it—but she had merely claimed them as her nephews, their mother dead in an accident and she the designated guardian, taking them back to the States.

Giles would follow them. She had no doubts of that. Hence the mundane airplane ride, bought with perfectly mundane credit cards—along with the decoy tickets, to Paris, Lisbon, Moscow, Cairo, and Singapore. They would spend the week in New York, letting the sheer presence of millions of other minds erode their psychic trail while she prepared for the intense magics of time-shifting and began erasing the boys' memories. Then the shift,  _then_  the trip to California and then—

_Then I find someone to take them in. If anybody out there will._  Her contacts here—the ones who weren't on Giles' side—had a few leads, but nothing solid yet. Lady Missouri had some ideas for her, but there were still loose ends to be tied up.

She felt Alex straining at the magic that bound him, and drew on the power of the sea to strengthen the spell-net. If Giles had just consented to leave Liam alone, to leave Buffy that solace, neither Willow nor Buffy would have fought him over Alex. Not after what had happened.

_Blood, Liam screaming, flames that danced in the shapes of people—_

He would have beaten Liam to death if Willow hadn't sensed the spikes in the local magics. When Buffy had interfered, he had attacked her, trying to pin her to the ceiling with a knife of power. Flames had erupted from the walls, burning with such an intense, unnatural heat that nothing in the room had survived. The whole house would have gone up if Willow hadn't managed to fling up a shield in time.

She had bound Alex's power. Had hoped it was a fluke, a child's emotional loss of control, that sending Liam to spend a few nights elsewhere and giving Alex some undivided maternal attention would calm him down.

Three days later, he had attacked Buffy with a knife. It was a mundane enough attack—except that the knife was a mystical weapon, enchanted to prevent accidental injuries, and Alex had lovingly told her everything he planned to do to her with that knife. It might have worked, if his mother wasn't also a Slayer, wasn't the Primary. If they hadn't known the Healer.

And that was when they'd realized, for the first time, what the plan had been.

The demon that had taken the form of Hank Summers had done its research—but not enough. Not even the Council had ever put it together, because so few Slayers survived to bear children, because a few had borne daughters  _before_  the power came to them. The demon's plan to sire a demon daughter with Slayer powers had failed because of simple biology. A Slayer's body was hostile to sperm that bore an X chromosome. No Slayer, once she took her power, could have a daughter.

"Aunt Willow?"

She looked at the boy sitting beside her—the boy who looked almost ten, but was barely nine months old; the sleepy, pure-hearted side effect of that damned demon's plotting. "What is it, little man?"

"Where's Mommy?"

"She had to stay in London, sweetie. She'll come later."  _Forgive me the lie, Liam. Forgive me everything._

"Is she mad at me?"

"Oh, no, of course not." She undid Liam's seatbelt and pulled him into a hug. "It's just—it's dangerous, is all."

"It's because of Alex, isn't it?"

Just like his mother. Perfectly ordinary, with flashes of brilliant insight. "Yes."

"Why couldn't I stay?"

_Because Giles wanted to kill you._  Giles had taken everything in stride, even being an honorary grandfather…until Alex's true nature became apparent. Then....

At some level, Ripper still existed, tucked away someplace where Giles could access him when the situation called for utter ruthlessness. Ripper had smothered Ben to vanquish Glory. Ripper would have no problem smothering two more crises, even if they wore the shapes of small boys. Even if he loved them. Look what he'd done to Dawn.

"It's dangerous for both of you in London right now." She stroked his hair. "We've got a good place for you to go. Safe. Nothing will find you."

"But what about Mommy and Priss and you?"

"We'll be all right." Not even Giles would take on the Primary. And there were damn few witches  _capable_  of taking on Willow if she put her mind to something, not since she worked the spell to make all Potentials into Slayers. Children, though, children were fragile, even supernatural ones. Alex had unbelievable powers, but they weren't controlled, and he still had to sleep. Liam didn't have that much. No protection at all.

_At all...._

"Here, little man." She shifted his weight in her lap so that she could undo the necklace she was wearing. "This is a talisman. You remember what those are?"

"Pr'tections."

"Right. It'll protect you." She fastened it around his neck. "And it will connect you to me and your mommy."

"Forever?" he asked.

Willow's composure nearly cracked. "Forever," she whispered. "Now sleep, little man. Sleep for me." She touched his mind with a spare tendril of magic, and he dozed off. "Forgive us," she whispered into his hair. "It's the only thing we can think to do."


	2. Chapter 2

_Minnesota_

_4 A.S._

Dean sat straight up in bed, his hand on the knife beneath his pillow, searching through the half-light of the motel room for the thing that had woken him. His heart was pounding—the tension of that last hunt hadn't quite faded yet—and he was dead certain there was something in the room with him—

"No, Mommy, don't!"

The voice came from the other bed, and after another muddled second Dean recognized Sammy's voice. "Son of a—" he muttered. "Sam! Wake up!"

" _No, Mommy!_ " Sam screamed, and Dean hurled a pillow at him.

The soft impact seemed to do the trick; Sam came out of bed with a startled "Wah?"

"Shut up and sleep."

"Sorry," Sam mumbled, and rolled over. In the light that came through the shades, Dean saw him sandwich his head between two pillows.

"You better not suffocate, either," Dean grumbled, giving his remaining pillow a good punchdown and jerking the blankets back up. If it wasn't a goddamned nightmare, waking them both up in the middle of the fucking night, it was a vision striking in the middle of a case and ripping Sam apart with pain.

 _Heaven forbid you suggest he look into it or talk to somebody, because then he goes all surly and doesn't talk and plays that crap music of his._  Not to mention what getting woke up in the middle of every night was doing to  _his_  sleep cycle. One of them was going to get killed, and it might be Sam, if Dean got sleep-deprived enough—

"Dean?" Sam asked, derailing that train of thought.

"Dude, awake or asleep," Dean growled into his pillow. "Pick one."

"Sorry, but— I— Do you remember plane trips?"

"There was that plane-crashing demon—"

"When you were little. With Mom."

Dean pushed himself up and stared at his brother through the dim light. "Do  _what?_ "

"I remember being on a plane. With you. And a woman. It'd have to be Mom, right?"

"I think for once you were having a normal dream."

"But this woman had  _red_  hair—"

" _Sammy._ " Sam shut up. "The farthest I ever traveled with Mom was to Topeka or Kansas City for Christmas shopping. And I think we visited Uncle Jamie in Tonganoxie once. Never went anywhere that needed a plane. It was a fucking  _dream_  for once. Go back to sleep." Sam didn't say anything else.

***

When Dean woke up, Sam was already up and dressed and watching the Weather Channel on mute, even though it was still dark outside. "You okay?" Dean asked, worried. Usually it was the cartoons that Sam watched with the sound off. Infomercials, if it was a really bad day.

"How far are we from Cleveland?"

 _Do what?_   "Cleveland, Ohio?"

"No, Cleveland, Japan," came the acid reply.

"Depends. Where are we now?"

"Anoka. Minnesota."

"Um—" It took a few minutes to get his fogged brain to produce a rough map of the Midwest. "Twelve, fourteen hours, maybe?"

"Good. If we hit the road now, we can be there by dark."

"Whoa, wait a minute! I thought we were going after that nasty poltergeist out in Billings!"

"Call the Roadhouse and have somebody else do it." Sam slammed Dean's bag on the bed, smashing Dean's foot.

"Did I say you could pack my shit?" Dean snarled, jerking his foot back. "And that better not bruise."

"You were sleeping in."

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Dean threw back the covers and rummaged through the fast-food wrappers on the nightstand for his watch. "Jesus Christ, Sam, it's four-thirty in the morning!"

"I couldn't sleep."

"So why do I have to suffer?"

"Dammit, Dean, this is important!" Sam yelled. "I don't have an explanation, I just  _know!_  Will you just stop being an ass about it?"

 _Oh, this is going to be fun._  "Okay, okay," Dean said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. "Cleveland it is. Just don't take my head off."

For a second, he thought Sam might apologize—but that passed, and all Sam said was, "I'll pack the car," before he grabbed the keys and headed out into the dark.


	3. Chapter 3

_Cleveland, Ohio_

Mornings came late in the new headquarters— _new_ , because even after years it still didn't seem like home;  _late_ , because she and Buffy were finally independent enough to set their own schedules. Some of the other Slayers, the ones who had afternoon classes or jobs, ran the store in the mornings, not that there was ever enough business before ten to get Willow out of bed anyway.

Willow checked the back bedroom on her way to the stairs. Buffy stood near the window, staring down at the street, twisting her locket—the locket that had replaced Angel's cross, the locket that held tiny locks of hair from the twins, the only memento Buffy had kept of them. The pictures had been burned, their clothes and toys put into charity bins all over London. But she was okay otherwise—no bleeding wounds, no new bandages or bruises, and her hair was wet, meaning that she'd taken the time to shower, which meant that the night's patrol had brought up nothing important. She'd give Willow a report this evening, before the babies came in from school for training.

The old building, cranky as it was, had been the discovery that had given Cleveland the advantage over a handful of other cities with high levels of demonic and vampiric activity. The Council had paid for restoration and renovations: the third floor became single large apartment—six bedrooms, each with a private bath, an actual dining room, a living room, a separate den, and enough closet space to make any woman swoon—the empty second floor provided space for a library, meeting, training, and weapons storage, and the two shops on the first floor gave them adequate camouflage and income.

_Though somehow I think a fortune-telling parlor and a magic shop were not what the Council had in mind when they recommended "dignified" day jobs for Watchers._

Buffy at least didn't have to work, the way she had those last couple of years in Sunnydale. She could keep focused on her  _true_  work, and for Willow, keeping the mundane books was a great de-pressurizer after the intricacies of the average week's research.

She unlocked her office on the first floor—the "shop office," where all the books on both stores were kept, and where she did normal things like interview potential employees and pay bills—and switched on the computer.

The chat program popped up immediately.  _Morning, Will._

Willow grinned at the computer screen, glanced at the clock, and typed a quick response.  _Just barely. How's Ellie?_

_Same old same old_ , was Xander's reply. He had bullied Eleanor and the Kaldeish into buying a computer for his private use, both to keep in contact with his friends, and to help Eleanor adapt to the modern world.  _Busier than we used to be, I think word's gotten out_. _You sending business our way?_

_You know better._  Eleanor was the Healer, the Slayer's opposite; her calling was fixing vampires and other human-based demonic entities. Knowledge of her had only made Buffy more determined to make sure the things she killed stayed dead.

_LOL. Tell me my fortune._

_That'll be $50_ , she typed, grinning.

_I'm good for it,_  came the prompt response.  _Fame? Fortune? Angel and Spike on my doorstep?_

She sighed.  _Still no word._

_Think they're dead?_

She hesitated. There were things she was reluctant to commit to. Just because it had been years with no word….  _They won't show up on your doorstep,_  she temporized.  _Neither one knows about Ellie, remember?_  Many vampires had completely forgotten about the Healer.  _What lesson are we up to?_

Xander was still trying to re-introduce Eleanor to the world, after her centuries of seclusion; her youngest bodyguard was over two hundred.  _Explaining to Ellie why I refer to Monica as your girlfriend. :)_

Willow laughed.  _How'd she take it?_

_Scarily well for a girl born in 1402. How's Buffy?_

She sighed.  _Anniversary._

It was several minutes before he responded, and then it was only  _hugs_. At least with Xander she didn't have to explain  _which_  anniversary, the way she did with the babies, or  _why_  it still tore Buffy up, the way she did with the Council—

_Because a Slayer should be able to take rape, childbirth, and losing the children within a year all in stride, shouldn't she. Especially when the rape was done under the illusion of incest._  That was how the old Councilors thought, anyway. Willow had a plan to fix that, however; there were plenty of not-quite-Slayers out there, women who had "aged out" before the spell that made all Potentials Slayers, who had too many responsibilities or health problems to go out and risk their lives nightly, but who could no longer sit by and leave things as they were. By the time Willow and the New Council were done with them, they would be Watchers, and the next generation of Council members.  _And then the stupid old bastards will get the first surprise of their stuffy little lives._

Properly, it was the second; they'd at least managed to do away with the Cruciamentum. Then again, there probably weren't enough vampires to torment every 18-year-old Slayer anymore.  _More than enough sadistic old Brits, though. Gah. Pity none of the old bats were in there when Caleb blew the place up._

There was enough annoyance accompanying that thought that the candles on the windowsill all flared to life. She sighed, and clamped down on the magic.

The computer beeped.  _Anything we can do?_

_Not unless you can bring them back,_  she thought, but didn't type that. No need in taking out the stress on Xander.  _No_ , she finally typed.  _She'll be all right. She always is. It just takes some time._

A knock on the door made her look up. Kellie, one of the younger Slayers who manned the store on the morning shift, poked her head in. "Will, there's some guys here for Madame Desdemona."

"We're not open yet."

"Yeah, but— There's something up with these two. I think you should see them."

Willow raised an eyebrow. "Something up?"

"Well, for starters, they're fighting over why they're here. Loudly. In the street. Young, bad boyish, and weaponed. Guns, I think."

" _Guns?_ " Even if they knew what a Slayer was, who brought guns to see the Slayer?

"Yeah. And it looks like Viv forgot to put up the 'closed' sign."

Willow groaned. "Next time she does that, I'm docking her pay. I'll be out in a few minutes. Keep them from destroying the place."

"Gotcha."

_Work calls,_  she typed.

_Try not to tell them anything too distressing._

She laughed.  _I'll try._


	4. Chapter 4

"Are you fucking  _kidding_  me?"

Sam regarded the old, "revitalized" building with something of Dean's distaste, even if he wasn't about to let Dean see it. "This is where we're supposed to be," he said, trying to put a defiant note in his voice. Dean was already pissed about the detour that had cost them a week in jail.  _Wasn't my idea to use the sheriff as bait for a dead Neolithic hunter_.

Then again, if the man hadn't been  _grateful_  for them saving his ass, he might have actually done the proper paperwork when he "misplaced" the key for a week. And there would have been no way to hide Dean's record.

Dean glared at him, and Sam sighed inwardly. "Defiant" must have come out as "petulant" again. "Which one?" he demanded. "The palm-reader's shop—" He jabbed a finger at the blacked-out window on the left that proclaimed in silver lettering  _Madame Desdemona, Astrology, Palmistry, Tarot, Scrying, Numerology, & Runecasting._ "—or the overpriced incense-and-candle clearinghouse?" The finger pointed accusingly at the second window, decked in displays of scarves, jewelry, and New Age statuary. Coppery lettering—almost exactly the same typeface as Madame Desdemona's—labeled the store  _Gaia's Seal_.

"Maybe it's a psychic. Like Missouri—"

"And you know that most psychics are huge fakes!" Dean yelled. A girl walking by shot the Impala a suspicious glance before she headed into the building.

"Would you calm down?" Sam hissed, hoping she wasn't about to call the cops. There had been more than enough police presence in his life for one month. "Look, I'll go in by myself, see—"

"Oh, no, you don't. Not again. Last time I had to pull your ass out of the fire, it was a literal fire and I didn't have eyebrows for a month!"

"That was over a year ago!"

"Yeah, well, my eyebrows hold a grudge." Dean threw the car door open and climbed out.

" _What?_ " Some days there was no understanding Dean.

Dean was rummaging through the trunk by the time Sam managed to get out of the car. "Nobody gets our real names, I don't care what your visions are telling you," Dean ordered, shoving extra ammo into his jacket pocket before rummaging through the handguns. "And you take a weapon. I'm not walking into anything."

He wasn't kidding; he stuffed a bottle of salt into one pocket and found room for a vial of holy water in another. "Don't you think you're being a  _little_  overdramatic?"

"Sammy," Dean said, rearranging the jacket until the weight fell evenly, "if there's one thing I've learned, it's that anything that comes out of  _your_  head usually means trouble."

Sam stifled a sigh.  _This is going to be a long day._


	5. Chapter 5

There was a tiny antechamber between her office and the parlor's main room, where they kept the supplies; she pulled on the plain black robe over her clothes and shook her hair out of its ponytail. It was weird, but shucking the more stereotypical trappings of clairvoyants-for-hire had actually  _increased_  business. Willow just wasn't sure if that was because people felt sorry for them ("poor little fortune-teller, can't afford a decent robe!") or if it just gave her an aura of sincerity that more dramatic types lacked.

She checked her appearance in the mirror, straightened her necklace, and opened the door—and knew immediately what Kellie meant. About her own age, good-looking enough to cut a huge swath of heartache through the ranks of the baby Slayers. Not much for wardrobes, though; she'd bet money that everything they owned came in variations of "T-shirt and jeans". If they'd been fighting loudly enough in public to worry Kellie, probably brothers. Siblings away from any parental authority tended to have the most vicious fights.  _Thank Goddess I'm an only._

Something in the way they carried themselves made her think of Buffy, of Angel, of all the warriors she knew—those who fought with the body, not the mind. There were renegade hunters everywhere, self-educated men and women seeking vengeance on anything remotely demonic, like Gunn's gang back in L.A. The old Council had no use for them, and had occasionally in the past tried to eliminate them, especially if hunters threatened to cross the Slayer's path. That was the reason she had chosen the Winchester man for the twins; the old boys' club would never dirty themselves with hunters, no matter how bad the potential apocalypse, and would never once suspect that one of their trainees  _would_.

" _Madame?_ " the shorter one, in a battered jacket, hissed at the taller. "She's younger than I am!"

"Will you  _shut up?_ " the taller, floppy-haired one snapped. He seemed surprised, but that wasn't unusual. Madame Desdemona lost a lot of business from people who expected—or wanted—Gypsy grannies.

"Frickin' phonies," the first grumbled, and Willow swallowed a grin. Snarky  _and_  skeptical. Her favorite. They were such  _fun_  to play with.

Then he turned around, and her heart froze. He wore a necklace, a simple black cord from which dangled a Luristan Horned God talisman. There couldn't be more than twenty of those talismans in the world, and at least fifteen of those were in museums and private collections. She'd inherited one, back in England, when one of the older ladies in the coven died, but she'd given it away.

_Liam_.

"Winchester," she whispered.

The brothers—oh, definitely brothers, the resemblance was obvious now that she looked for it—both stared at her in astonishment. "I— _what_  did you say?" Floppy Hair asked.

"Winchester. That's your name, isn't it?"

They shot each other startled looks. "How do you know that?" Jacket demanded.

"What's your name?"

"You tell me. You're the psychic."

"When I have time for sarcasm, I'll tell you!" she snapped. "Was your father John Winchester?"

***

It took everything Sam had not to blurt out  _How the fuck do you know that?_  He glanced at Dean, but Dean looked just as shocked as Sam felt. "Ma'am," Sam began, with every ounce of civility he could muster, "I think you have us mistaken for—"

"John Winchester, whose wife Mary was killed by a demon, who became a hunter for vengeance, and who died—what, a year ago? Two?" Dean's jaw dropped. "Are you his sons?"

Sam looked at Dean. "Maybe she's for real," Dean finally managed, "like Missouri."

"I'm not psychic," she said. "I know who your father is because I gave you to him, twenty years ago. Lady Missouri was the one who pointed me to him."

_Lady Missouri?_  Sam finally found his voice. "Look, John Winchester  _was_  our father, but nobody  _gave_  us to him. He was our  _father_. Mary was our mother—"

Madame Desdemona shook her head. "Mary was his wife, not your mother. She'd been dead for two years when he agreed to take you in."

"She  _was_  our mother!" Dean shouted. "Sammy may not remember her, but  _I do!_ "

"Sammy?" she asked quietly.

"Son of a  _bitch_ ," Dean muttered, and smacked himself in the forehead, realizing what he'd done. Under other circumstances, Sam would have laughed; usually it was Dean lecturing him about revealing their identities.

"And your name?" she asked.

"Sammy, we're leaving," Dean growled. He grabbed Sam's arm and half-dragged him to the door.

"Stop right there, little man," the woman ordered, and to Sam's utter shock Dean obeyed, so abruptly releasing his grip on Sam's arm that Sam lost his balance and fell against the wall.

"What's up with you?" Sam hissed, but his annoyance changed to worry when he saw Dean's face: panic and a touch of fear, like that time Andy had laid the whammy on him and made him spill his guts. Which meant even  _Dean_  didn't know why he'd obeyed that command.

"Now. What is your name?" Madame Desdemona asked, in a soft, dangerous voice.

"Dean," Dean answered automatically, the panic in his eyes deepening. "James Dean Winchester."

_Shit!_  Dean listened to embarrassingly bad music and spouted pop culture references at all the worst times and couldn't take  _anything_  seriously, but even he had his limits, and that name of his was what he considered  _too_  embarrassing. Sam doubted even Cassie knew Dean's full name.

"Sam and Dean. Winchester." She muttered something Latinate—not a spell; maybe swearing? "My name is Willow Rosenberg. I—I knew your father, a long time ago. I took you to him— Oh, God, I've got to tell Buffy! Stay here!"

Dean was recovering his snappishness. "Lady, we're not—"

" _Stay right here, little man_."

Dean abruptly sat down. Willow swept out of the room. Sam turned on him. "What is going  _on_  with you?" he demanded.

"I don't know!" Dean shouted. "Jesus, you think  _I_  don't want to know? I don't know what's going on any more than you do!"

"What happened to 'they don't get anything'?"

" _I don't know!_  Maybe she is a real psychic or—or like Andy!" He glared at the door. " _Fuck_." He crossed his arms and propped his feet on the table, knocking over Desdemona's crystal ball. Sam dived for it and luckily managed to catch it. "I  _told_  you this was a bad idea."

"Look, I know you don't want to be here, but can you try to be polite long enough for me to find out what's going on?" Dean grumbled something. "You are such a whiny ass sometimes."

"Yeah, whatever."

The back door opened, and Willow came back in, followed by another woman, a petite blonde about Willow's age. She glanced at Willow, then at them—and then the glance turned into a open-mouthed stare. She looked for all the world like someone had just hit her in the back of the head.

Sam heard Dean stand up beside him, but he wasn't prepared for the single word that shattered the silence.

"Mommy?"


	6. Chapter 6

Not until everyone, including Sam, turned to stare at him did Dean realize he'd said anything, and even then he just had a vague sense that his mouth had opened and spilled some sound. "What?" he asked, bewildered. He was used to stares from strangers, but why the hell was Sam looking at him like that?

"Dean," Sam said, in that really annoying  _have you lost your mind?_  voice, "you just called her  _mommy_."

"Did not," Dean retorted, the only answer he could possibly make. "Why would I—"

"That's what I want to know!"

"Oh, God." The soft exclamation cut through the argument. The blonde was staring at them with her hands to her mouth in a gesture of shock. "Will—"

"Buffy, meet Sam and Dean Winchester. They—" Willow's voice cracked, but it sounded like she was giddy, trying not to laugh, not about to cry. "They're the  _twins_."

" _What?_ " Sam screeched.

Dean managed not to flinch; when Sammy hit high notes, he  _really_  hit high notes. "Lady, you really are a lousy psychic if you can't tell that we're not twins," he said.

"You called me  _mommy_ ," Buffy said softly. There were tears in her eyes. She walked over to Sam, reached up to gently touch his face, like she didn't believe he was standing there. "It can't be— Will, you said you—  _How?_  How did you find us?" She stood on tiptoe, still barely reached Sam's nose. "Well, you certainly didn't get your height from  _my_  side of the family."

Sam shot Dean a panicked look. Under other circumstances, Dean might have laughed.

There was just one problem. He  _remembered_  his mother, and her name hadn't been anything as fucking ridiculous as  _Buffy_. "We're not your kids," he said flatly. "She's lying to you."

The red-headed fortune-teller smirked. " _You're_  the one who just called her—"

"Shut up!" he snapped, frustration strangling wit. "Whatever I said, it wasn't  _me_  saying—"

"Calm down," Buffy said, coming over to him. She said it like a mother soothing a child. "It's all right—Dean, was it?"

"If we're your kids, you'd think you'd know our names."

"She only knows your original names," Willow interrupted. "When I gave you to John Winchester, he gave you new names. I told him not to tell me what they were, because any witch who knew them could have tracked you down."

"You didn't  _give_  us to anybody!"

"You were in danger," Buffy said, still in that quiet  _get him in off the ledge and then we'll worry_  voice. "Willow found you a safe place."

"She did, huh." He looked from her to Willow and back again. Fine. Be that way. "And how long ago was this?"

"Two years."

"And how old were we?"

"Chronologically? Nine months."

"Jesus," Sam muttered.

"Then we're definitely not  _your_  kids, are we?" Dean was not above using logic when the situation called for it. "Do I look like a three-year-old?"

Buffy snorted. "You were three years old when you were two  _months_  old," she said.

Sam had been undecided, but  _that_  nonsensical sentence put him back on Dean's side. "That's imposs—"

"You were the equivalent of ten years old when I had to give you up." Her voice left no room for argument. Not that Dean was going to let that stop him.

"I erased your memories," Willow said—apologetically? Why was she apologizing? "Because of—of what you were, it took a lot of power. A lot of magic. It caused physical side effects. Sam needed more magic to erase his memories, so he came out of the spells physically younger."

Well, if that wasn't the most ridiculous thing he'd heard in—ever.

But Buffy was nodding, as if it made perfect sense.

Holy  _shit_. The poor woman actually  _believed_  what Desdemona—Willow—whothefuckever was telling her.

Anger boiled up, but not at poor deranged Buffy. She couldn't help it if she'd lost her grip on reality. Her kids must have been killed somehow, and that made her crack. The fortune-teller was using that to take advantage of her, spinning some wild story about hiding the kids somewhere safe. Using  _her_ , for some reason he couldn't see. Maybe not supernatural, maybe Buffy just had a small fortune hidden away that Willow was embezzling.

Dean didn't care. Every protective instinct he had jumped to the fore, just as if it had been Sammy she was brainwashing. He pulled the gun from inside his jacket and pointed it at Willow.

" _Dean!_ " Sam exclaimed.

"I don't know what kind of hold you've got on her," Dean said quietly. "Magic, hypnosis, mind-control, I don't care. You've got no right. She needs  _help_ , not—not whatever you're doing to her."

"Dean—"

"Shut up, Sammy. Now,  _Madame_  Desdemona, let her go, and tell her the truth so she can go get the kind of help she  _needs_."

Buffy hadn't backed away. She was, in fact, regarding the gun in his hand with a tolerant, amused smile. She  _had_  to be crazy. Sane people got out of the way when firearms became a factor. Sure, she wasn't in the direct line of fire, but that hardly made any difference with crazy—

"Tell her the truth," he ordered, not sure why it mattered so much. "Now."

Willow raised an eyebrow.

A second later, he was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, and the gun was in Buffy's hand. He hadn't even seen her  _move_. "You can get hurt with one of these things," she said dryly, removing the ammo. He noticed that she didn't handle the gun like an expert. More like she had just enough knowledge to disable one. Sammy'd handled guns better when he was eight.

"Get away from him."

Sam had pulled his gun, and had it pointed at Buffy. "Not at her, idiot," Dean muttered. Sam spared him a glare. "The fortune-teller—"

"Dean, she was just as surprised at that move as you were."

As if to prove it, Buffy tossed the empty gun at Willow, who caught it as skittishly as she would have a live rattlesnake. It danced in her hands for a moment before she finally managed to set it on the table. "What was that for?" she demanded. She sounded shaky. Buffy's actions had either caught her completely off-guard, which would have been impossible if she was actually controlling Buffy, or she was the best actress in the world. Dean hadn't decided yet.

"He can't get to you without going through me, and he's about to try," Buffy said evenly. "Aren't you?"

Since that had been  _exactly_  what he was thinking about doing, Dean didn't argue.

"Now, Sam, put that gun away before somebody  _really_  gets hurt." Sam glanced at Dean, looking for an order. "Look, you two, I don't like guns. And I sure as hell don't want them in my building. Put it away, or I'll take it away if I have to break your wrist to do it."

"Sammy," Dean growled, "don't you—"

"Let him up."

Buffy glanced at Dean. "I'm not keeping him down. But since you asked—" She held her hand out to Dean.

He took it, fully intending to flip her over—but her hand clenched on his with the unforgiving force of an iron vise. Girl was stronger than she looked.  _Way_  stronger. And faster. No wonder she'd gotten the gun away from him. Swearing under his breath, he let her pull him up.

Sam lowered the gun. " _Sammy!_ " he hissed, but Sam only shot him a glare.

"Much better. Now, let's try this again. Sam." Buffy pointed at Sam. "Dean." She pointed at him. "Buffy Summers." At herself. "Willow." At the fortune-teller. "I have two children. I was forced to give them up. Willow hid them someplace where they'd be safe. Now you're here, and Willow thinks you're them. You disagree. I  _understand_  that."

"Then why—"

"This is  _not_  a discussion I am having in the middle of the parlor, Dean Winchester." He knew that tone of voice. A woman using it  _meant_  what she said. Really meant it. No games need apply. "Will?"

"Um. Dinner?" the redhead suggested. "If they leave the guns in the car."

"Weapons are mandatory," Dean snapped.

"Weapons are fine," Buffy said. "It's the  _guns_  you can't bring in."

"Are you fucking  _serious?_ "

"Dean!"

"No guns. Bring all the knives and axes you want." Dean blinked.  _Axes?_  "We'll have dinner, a nice long session of explanations, and if you're still not convinced, go home."

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell the woman that their home was parked out on the street when Sam pointed out, "What are we going to do all day?"

Buffy shot him a look that convinced Dean the woman was a mother, even if she wasn't theirs. "Help fix dinner?" she suggested dryly. "Hell, it'll probably take Dean all afternoon to get all the spare ammunition out of his jacket." Sam choked.

"They'll need to move the car, too," Willow put in. "I've got three readings scheduled between two and five."

"There's not exactly—"

"We rent a space in the garage next door from one of the residents. She doesn't have a car, so the girls run errands for her, she lets us use her space for guests, we call it even. Going to stay?"

Dean glanced at Sam.  _C'mon, Sammy, see reason,_  he begged silently.

Sam saw the look, he had to. It didn't help. "Long enough for an explanation," he said finally. "Then we'll see."

Dean made himself smile through gritted teeth.


	7. Chapter 7

All in all, Sam decided, it would have been less stressful trying to banish a ghost with regular ammo. A really angry, really violent ghost. One of the ones that threw furniture. He hadn't seen this much tension over a meal since the one where he broke the news to Dad that he was leaving.

At least the food was good. He thought for a while that Dean—who had spent the afternoon sulking in the Impala, possibly apologizing to the guns, while Sam had been up here helping Buffy with dinner and catching up on e-mail while she napped—might manage to polish off the whole lasagna himself.  _It'll never be said that Dean Winchester doesn't know how to take advantage of a free meal._

Willow and Buffy tried to keep a light,  _normal_  conversation up—asking about their past, about Dad and schools and girls, about the kinds of demons they'd hunted. Dean answered with grunts, leaving Sam to take on  _their_  share of the talking. Not that there was much Sam could tell them that would make them think well of Winchesters.

And for some reason, he  _wanted_  them to think well of Dad, wanted them to know he'd done the best he could with them. Sam didn't believe their story, he couldn't, but—

Well, if John Winchester hadn't been their real father, it would explain a hell of a lot. Like the way he'd had a hard time distinguishing between "children" and "recruits."

"So," Dean said finally, announcing that he was finished by shoving the last breadstick in his mouth, "you called yourself a— What was it?"

"Slayer," Sam supplied. Dean glared at him.

"Playing dumb doesn't become you, Dean," Willow said dryly. "The technical term is 'vampire Slayer,' but vampires are just a part of the business."

"It used to be that there was only ever one Slayer at a time," Buffy said. "A young woman would be chosen more or less at random when the previous Slayer was killed. She'd become stronger, faster, get some annoying prophetic dreams, things like that. For thousands of years, that was how it went. I was one of those random girls."

"You just woke up one day and you were a vamp hunter?"

" _Slayer_ ," Buffy corrected Dean sharply. "Things changed a few years back. In order to fight the First, we needed—"

"First what?"

"First Evil. Or so it said. Fairly big, in the realm of big bads. Anyhow, we needed more than just the one Slayer. Willow managed to cast a spell that gave every potential Slayer in the world full powers. So now there's lots of us."

"And when you're not beating the crap out of primordial evil?"

 _Primordial?_  Sam stared at Dean. Had somebody sprinkled bits of the OED on Dean's lasagna?

"Close your mouth, Sam, lasagna doesn't look attractive half-chewed." Buffy grinned at him, softening the reprimand—but it was  _still_  a reprimand, and said in that Mommy Voice that every mother he'd ever met had. Fathers didn't have that particular voice; the Daddy Voice, while just as commanding, just as impossible to argue with, was harsher, leaving less room for forgiveness and cookies.

"Slayers do pretty much what hunters do," Willow said. "Kill demons, thwart evil plots, fight off the supernatural bad guys. All the things the normal authorities can't, or won't, handle."

"So why haven't we ever heard of you?" The challenge in Dean's voice was rude even for Dean. Sam kicked him under the table, which only got him a harder kick in return.  _That's gonna bruise._

"Because the people who used to be in charge of the Slayer didn't much like hunters. They—" Willow hesitated, obviously weighing her words. "In the past, there have been deaths. The old Council had no problem killing hunters who got too close to the Slayer."

"They  _what?_ " Buffy blurted. She hadn't known that, either. Interesting.

"They had a vested interest in making sure the Slayer didn't find out, either. C'mon, Buffy, you know how they were, all that 'chosen one means just one' crap. These people," she said, clearly talking to Sam and Dean now, "threw a fit when they realized Buffy wasn't working alone with just her Watcher. That she had friends who knew who she was and what she did and  _helped_  her at it. They thought it was a  _problem_ , when what it did was make her one of the longest-lived Slayers in history, and enabled us to kick the asses of some very big Big Bads."

"No more, though," Buffy said. "And if I find out the  _new_  Council is hunting hunters, I'll—"

Willow grinned. "Oh, I had a prohibition on that written into the by-laws two years ago."

_Well, at least that's one thing we don't have to worry about._

"So," Dean said, grabbing the conversation and jerking it back around to the intended topic, "dinner was nice and all, but there was a fairy tale you were going to tell us."

" _Dean_ ," Sam hissed.

"What? You're done. You've been picking at that for five minutes. I'm done, you're done, they're done, I'm tired of listening to you blame Dad for everything that ever went wrong in your life."

"I did  _not_ —"

"Boys." Buffy pushed her plate away and stood up. "This isn't exactly dinner-table conversation."

They followed her into the living room. Buffy tucked herself into an armchair; Willow sat on the floor near the television. Dean promptly claimed the couch in a sprawl that left Sam with no choice but the other armchair.

"So. Explanation time." Buffy cleared her throat nervously, and never quite met either his or Dean's eyes. "Everything started in a place called Sunnydale—"

" _Sunnydale?_ " Sam yelped, and Dean sat a little straighter in his sprawl. "The town that imploded a few years back? You were there?"

"We sort of did the imploding," Willow said, in a small, apologetic voice. "We didn't  _mean_  to."

"Oh, yeah," Dean muttered, "that makes it all better."

" _How?_ " Sam asked, ignoring his brother. "The whole state went nuts, everybody thought it was terrorists practicing for L.A.—"

"Not  _everybody_ ," came a growl from the couch.

"Magic, mostly. There was a Hellmouth—that's, well, a sort of opening to Hell, or at least a hell dimension—right under Sunnydale. That First Evil I mentioned? It was coming through it. The only way to stop him was to seal it, and to seal it—" She shrugged. "Sucked the whole town in.

"Afterwards, we made our way to London. We wanted to re-establish the Council. Fix everything that had been wrong with it the first time. It was me and Willow and Giles, a bunch of baby Slayers, some retirees that had escaped the destruction of the old Council, and this random coven from Devon.... It was a mess. And then...." She twisted the heart-shaped locket that hung at her throat. Her eyes became distant, like she didn't see the room, or Willow, or them, and Sam had the sudden odd impression that the story had swallowed the Slayer. "It got messier."


	8. Chapter 8

_London, England_

_5 months AS_

Yesterday, it had been ninety degrees. Today, it was forty.  _I don't care what Giles says about this being heaven on earth, this is_ not _normal, and it's way worse than California._  Buffy shivered as she dressed. The old mansion's heating system wasn't equipped to deal with this kind of rapid change. Neither was England; there had been massive thunderstorms last night, and lightning had taken out substations all over the southern half of the country.  _At this point, I don't care if it's cold or hot, I just want it to pick one and stay!_

She headed downstairs. Matilda had left two oil lamps burning in the kitchen; she discovered why when she flipped the switch and nothing happened. Power was still out. Cereal for breakfast, then.  _I wonder if we have any of the good stuff—bleah, just English. Time to write for another shipment of decent cereal. And Pop-Tarts. They don't need milk._

Buffy was pondering her limited choices when the sound of the antique knocker thundered through the front of the house. "I hate that thing," she muttered, and headed for the door. It was Matilda's night off, Giles was at a meeting in York, and Willow was out on a date.  _I'm just glad she's finally getting out. She's been so quiet since Kennedy got killed...._

She opened the door, and froze.

"Hi, honey."

For several heartbeats, she stared at Hank Summers. Her mouth moved, but she couldn't form words. But then, finally, she managed. "Daddy?"

"I'm sorry it took me so long, honey, I didn't get your letters, I didn't know about Joyce—"

" _Daddy!_ " She threw herself into his arms. "How did—when—"

"I just got here. Soon as I found out, I dropped everything and came to London." He squeezed her tighter. "I'm so sorry, hon, so damn sorry—"

"You're here now," she said. "I— Come in! Nobody else is here, I was just about to have breakfast. Power's out, so just cereal—"

"Breakfast?" He looked scandalized. "At this hour?"

Oops. "I—um—I work the night shift."

"Oh." He looked disappointed. "I was hoping to take you out for dinner. To get to know each other again."

She hesitated. The wacky weather had driven most of the unnatural critters into hiding; the vamps had hidden themselves away as if it had been raining holy water. "You know, things have been slow lately. They can do without me for one night. Let me put on some real clothes."

He took her to a little Thai place, chosen as much for the fact that it still had power as for the food. It was packed, probably with people who had non-working kitchens. "I can't believe you came to see me," Buffy said, picking at her food. "I mean, when Mom died—"

"I never got the message, sweetheart. I didn't know anything about it until this old man came to see me last week, he said that he was working with you, and you were here, and then he told me about your mother— Oh, God, honey, I am  _so_  sorry, I should have been there for you—"

"It's all right," she said, and to her own surprise, she found she meant it. "I had Giles and Willow and Xander. They— They helped."

"I'm your  _father_ , Buffy. It was my place to be there for you. And for Joyce."

"It really is okay, Dad. I'm just glad you found me."

"So am I." He smiled at her. "Oh, I forgot! Here." He pulled a picture out of his wallet. "You've got a little brother now."

She raised an eyebrow. "The secretary?"

"Buffy, that happened after your mother and I split up. You can't blame Maria."

"I guess not." She wasn't entirely sure she believed him, but she accepted the picture anyway. It was of a baby, probably only a couple of months old, who must take after his mother; he had a head full of black hair, standing on end, and black eyes—but his smile was the same as the one in her own baby pictures. She ran her fingers lightly over it, thinking of another set of baby pictures with that smile, of the daughter Hank didn't know about, the daughter that had only existed for a year. "What's his name?"

"Diego. Diego Enrique Summers García." She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. Poor kid. What I thought, but Maria insisted. And since his  _abuelo_  was there at the time, and that man's the size of a mountain, I wasn't going to argue." She giggled. "Oh, sure, laugh. He hates me more than your grandfather did. At least with Joyce's dad, we spoke the same language."

"Is he teaching you all the useful words?"

He grinned. "They might be useful, but I'm not repeating them to you."

"Oh, come on. There's a Spanish—" Horrified, she realized she had almost said  _Spanish demon lord_  to him. "Um, a Spanish guy that's been, ah, giving the company fits. I could use some harsh words to tell him what to do with himself."

"Your mother would kill me!" he protested, laughing—and then he realized what he'd said. "Oh,  _God_. I'm sorry, Buffy, I didn't— It's only been a couple of days for me, and I was enjoying this so much—"

"It's okay, Dad."

"No, it's not, I shouldn't—"

"Dad. It's been three years. I'm not going to have a breakdown every time you mention Mom."

For a long, terrible moment, he just looked at her. "You're really not my little girl anymore, are you?"

"No. I'm not. I haven't been for a long time."

The meal became awkward after that, punctuated by a series of failed conversation-starters. Neither one was inclined to linger over it.

He spent the drive back talking about Diego and Maria, a one-sided and very determined conversation. Buffy listened with a smile plastered on her face, not wanting to point out that all the talking in the world wasn't going to convince her to go to Spain. Not yet. There was too much to do here, even if it had slowed down for a few days.

Not that she was against the idea of a little vacation, once they got the new Council and the baby Slayers all settled. And Spain should at least be warmer than England, which made it a highly desirable vacation spot at the moment.

He pulled the car up in front of the mansion, and finally broached the subject. "Buffy, I was hoping— Would you come to visit us? Now? Just for a few weeks? I miss you."

"I miss you, too. But I have responsibilities here."

"Your job?"

"Yeah."

"They can handle things without you."

_I wish_. "They really can't. Maybe in a few months I can come visit. Maybe for Christmas."

"Too bad."

His voice had changed, subtly, a change that made all her instincts scream at her. "What?"

He turned to her. His eyes were suddenly glowing yellow, and there was a stabbing pain in her arm.

Numbly, she looked down, saw the syringe in his hand, the pinprick of blood on her skin. "We'll have to do this the hard way," Hank Summers said, in that changed voice, and reached to stroke her hair in a disgustingly intimate gesture.

Automatically she raised her hand to defend herself, to shove his intrusive hand away from her, but he batted it away, as he had batted her hands away from hot stoves when she was a toddler. A wave of weakness washed over her, and she fell back against the seat, lacking the strength or the control to command her body. "So considerate of the Council to create something to incapacitate a Slayer," he said. "Pity they never had the balls to use enough of it to  _really_  control you."

He tightened her seatbelt, then put the car in gear and drove away from the mansion.


	9. Chapter 9

Five days.

Five days of searching, of interrogating every demon and vampire, Slayer and Watcher, across the length and breadth of Europe, of calling and e-mailing every Slayer and Watcher around the world. Five days of trying to keep Matilda's over-maternal heart from failing in a bout of hysterics. Five days of fighting with Giles over the wisdom of contacting Angel to enlist Wolfram and Hart's resources on  _all_  planes. Five desperate, desperate days since they realized that Buffy wasn't going to return from her patrol.

Buffy wasn't dead. Willow was certain of that much. She was tied to Buffy through the spell that had awakened all the Slayers; one of the side effects, one she'd noticed as soon as they left the Sanctuary, was that she felt it every time a Slayer died.

Now she stood with her hands over the massive globe in the library, whispering words of magic as she slowly spun it, seeking something,  _anything_ , that might give her a clue as to Buffy's whereabouts. She had done this spell every morning and every evening since they realized Buffy was gone. There had been no result, not the faintest glimmer. It was incredibly difficult to block this particular locator spell, which made her fear that Buffy had been kidnapped by something that had taken her out of this reality.

Red light flared, right in the center of the star that marked London, and fountained up. Willow frowned, testing the magic flows around her, fearing something had gone wrong. Why would it go off now, when it hadn't in the last five days?

Matilda screamed. For an old woman, the housekeeper had the lung capacity and shrillness of your average toddler. " _Mister_   _Giles! Willow!_ "

Willow reached the foyer just as Giles and a Watcher she didn't know brought Buffy in off the doorstep. " _Buffy!_ "

"She's unconscious," Giles said.

"No shit," Willow snapped, and helped him lower Buffy to the floor. "Dear God—"

Her clothes were all ripped, and some of those gashes cut into her skin, leaving a crust of blood and dirt. Beneath that were the dark mottled shadows of bruises, every color from almost-healed sickly yellow to pure black. More blood matted her hair into a uniform darkness. None of the injuries were fresh enough to still be bleeding. "Buffy?" Willow knelt beside her. "Buff, please, wake up—" She slapped Buffy's cheek lightly, but there was no reaction.

"I tried magic," the other Watcher said, "but she's too far gone, I can't reach her—"

"If you had any magic worth using, I'd know who you are," Willow interrupted, summoning her own powers.

Five spells later, Buffy was still unconscious, and that Watcher was smirking a bit. Arrogant bastard.

"Maybe we should call a doctor, Mr. Giles," Matilda said, fluttering around the edges of the room. "Take her to hospital—"

"No," Giles said flatly. "We can't risk questions. We haven't gotten all the documentation settled yet." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Willow—"

Willow had made her decision before he even finished. "Put her in her room," Willow ordered. "Hang on, Buffy," she whispered, and pushed herself to her feet. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Where—" Giles began.

"To the mountains," Willow said flatly, and worked a teleportation spell.

England's mountains were little more than low hills; Willow wasn't willing to take the chance that they weren't mountain enough. Instead, she landed in a knee-deep snowdrift somewhere high in the Alps, with the wind blasting at her and ripping apart clothing meant for late summer in London. "I seek the Healer!" she shouted; the wind whirled the words into eddies of snow and echoes. " _Bambi!_ " she screamed.

And the snow disappeared, the wind died to a soft warm breeze, and she stood surrounded by bright red, blue, and purple flowers from five continents. The Sanctuary. "Thank God," she whispered, seeing the Healer's castle across the yard. "It worked."

The sun sank in, then. None of the Kaldeish could come to greet her. She'd have to find her way inside on her own, and the damn place was magicked to a fare-thee-well; most of the doors appeared and disappeared at will. Only the Healer and the Kaldeish could maneuver through the house without a guide. And maybe Xander, now.

The breeze brought the sound of laughter. Willow whirled around.

In the yard, past the grove where Kennedy was buried, Xander and Bambi were sitting on a blanket, having a picnic. " _Xander!_ " She took off across the garden, trampling rare flowers in her panic.

Xander jerked around. "Willow?" he screeched, jumping up. "How— What are you  _doing_  here?"

"Buffy," she panted, trying to catch her breath. "Kidnapped, attacked, beaten, won't wake up—"

"Someone attacked the Slayer?" Bambi asked. "How?"

"Don't know. Disappeared. Found her on doorstep. Please, you've got to help—"

"Ellie—"

"Of course, Xander." The Healer rose. "I will tell Matthias, and we will—"

"We can't!"

"Xander, I  _must_  tell Matthias," Bambi insisted quietly. "It is his duty to protect me. He must know where I am."

"There's no time!"

"There will be plenty of time," Bambi assured him, giving him a quick kiss. "We will not need to travel far outside the Sanctuary." She ran for the mansion—a dead run, Willow was gratified to see, though she still wasn't sure how the Healer managed to run at all in those old-fashioned gowns.

"Will, how did anybody get Buffy—"

"I don't know. Five nights ago she disappeared, we've ripped Europe apart looking for her, and then there she was on the doorstep, beaten to a pulp, and we can't get her to wake up!"

"Sh." He embraced her. "It'll be all right. Ellie can fix anything—"

"Ellie?"

"Her real name's Eleanor. 'Bambi' was just— Well, she has an odd sense of humor. Too many centuries locked up with those wacky vamp guards of hers."

"Oh." Willow looked across the yard, willing the other woman to hurry. "She's hurt, Xander, she's hurt bad, I tried all the magic I knew and I couldn't wake her up—"

"Ellie can fix it, Will, she can," he soothed. "She made me a new eye out of nothing, she can fix anything— See, here she is, she's coming."

Eleanor was adroitly picking her way through a flowerbed. "Matthias is wroth, but so long as the sun shines, he cannot come here to argue. Now, let us go." She held out her hand, and a gash of light appeared in the air before them. "Willow, I must take the destination from you."

"The mountains—" Willow began, holding her hand out.

"I am the Healer," Eleanor said, with a small smile, and brushed her fingers across the back of Willow's hand. "I am not subject to the same limitations as my guests." The light thickened and widened, and began spinning an image in itself: Buffy's room, back in the mansion. Giles and Matilda were there, but it looked like they'd kicked everyone else out. "Now, go through before me," Eleanor said.

Willow didn't wait; she ran through. Xander charged through right behind her.

In the time since Willow had left, Giles and Matilda had stripped Buffy of her filthy clothes, washed off the worst of the dirt and blood, and put her to bed; Matilda's maternal streak was taking over, because Buffy was tucked under about fifteen quilts. Matilda squawked when she saw Xander and Eleanor. "Healer," Giles said formally.

"Watcher."

"Oh, God," Xander said, getting his first look at Buffy. "Giles, is she—"

"That will be up to Bambi, I'm afraid. It's more than I can handle."

"Her name's Eleanor," Xander said absently, but stepped out of the way.

"Eleanor?" Giles echoed, but he chose to ignore the name confusion in favor of the matter at hand. "We can't wake her. Can you—"

"I will try, Watcher." She laid a hand on Buffy's forehead. "She has been drugged," the Healer said finally, frowning. "It is not a single substance. There are many components... It is something designed specifically to incapacitate a Slayer. She was given far too much in too short a time."

"It—it's not fatal, is it?" Willow asked.

"Designed to incapacitate a Slayer," Giles repeated dully. "Dear Lord—" He rattled off a list of ingredients; Eleanor nodded to each. "Damn! It's the potion they used to use for the Cruciamentum. To make the Slayer helpless."

"I thought the recipe was destroyed!"

"It was supposed to be. Somebody must have found it, or there was another copy, or—or something."

"But it's not fatal, is it?" Xander persisted.

"No," Eleanor said, "I can counteract it. But it will take some time." She held her hand a few inches from Buffy's skin, and moved it slowly down towards Buffy's feet—a human MRI, Willow thought bitterly. "A cracked rib. Rope burns. Bruises. Cuts. Some—" She hesitated. "Certain private trauma."

Willow shot a confused look at Xander. "Does she speak modern yet?"

"Ellie?"

Eleanor wouldn't meet his gaze. Or Willow's. "She was violated. By a man."

"Raped, you mean," Xander said flatly. Eleanor blushed and nodded. "Jesus. I'm going to find him and kill—"

"Keep vengeance out of this room," Eleanor ordered sharply. "It is not what she needs now. Xander, bring me a chair." Xander dragged a chair over. Eleanor sat down and took Buffy's hand in hers. "I have to counteract the drugs before I can do anything else. I need quiet."

"Of course," Giles said. "We'll leave you to it."


	10. Chapter 10

Hours passed. Xander paced worriedly around the library while Giles worked on destroying a bottle of Scotch. Willow curled up with a cat in one of the obnoxiously overstuffed armchairs that had come with the place and tried not to cry. "Ellie will fix her," Xander said every now and then, usually right before he gave in and accepted an offer of Scotch from Giles. Willow wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.

"How are things with you and—Ellie, is it?" Giles finally asked, to break the silence.

"Eleanor. I call her Ellie. We're good, I guess." Xander stopped, looking up the stairs that led to the back hallway, to Buffy's room, and rambled on. "I took her out to Denver the other week. She liked it a lot. I even got her to start a conversation with a strange man. Course, it took  _six hours_  to convince her that it wasn't unseemly for a lone woman to approach a man anymore. Never had  _that_  problem with Anya."

That brought Willow out of her grief and worry long enough to lob him a sharp look. "You're sleeping together, and she still worries about what's  _unseemly?_ "

"Will, have you  _ever_  known one of my relationships to go normally?" he retorted.

"Good point."

"Also," he added, his eyes twinkling, "she doesn't sleep."

"Nitpicker."

"Witch."

Xander finally passed out on the couch. Giles dozed off in the corner with his glasses askew and a cat in his lap. Willow envied them; no matter how she tried, she couldn't sleep.

It was nearly dawn when Eleanor finally descended the stairs. "I've finished, for now. I'll need to rest before I can do more. I have limits outside the Sanctuary." She sat down next to Xander and stroked his hair, such a gentle, intimate gesture that Willow could actually believe the Healer loved him. He didn't wake up, but he did murmur in his sleep and wriggle towards the touch. "I wish I could sleep," she said softly, so softly that Willow wondered if the Healer even knew she'd said the words aloud. "I wish I could share that with him."

"Is she awake?" Willow asked—quietly, so as not to wake Xander or Giles. Though she probably  _should_  wake Giles, or he was going to have a terrible crick in his neck to go along with the hangover.

"No. I have removed the drugs from her system and healed the worst of the injuries. She sleeps now, a true sleep. The—" She hesitated, color creeping up her cheeks. "What happened to her—"

"The word is  _rape_ , Eleanor," Willow snapped. "If you can't handle it, how the  _fuck_  are you going to help her?"

Anger flashed in Eleanor's dark eyes, but her voice was even when she answered. "Very well. I do not believe, from what I sensed, that she had any respite from him during the days she was gone. I did not have to send her to sleep, merely ease the terror that kept her awake. She has had very little rest these past days."

"No kind of rape could be  _constant_ , not for five  _days!_  Nobody could—"

"I did not say that it took up the entire time. There was magic involved, and beatings, and some sort of—" She shook her head. "It seems almost as if something rummaged through her mind, searching—"

"Searching for what?"

"I'm not sure." Eleanor continued to stroke Xander's hair. "I cannot tell if all the imbalances I sense are from injuries, or if her inner chemicals were altered intentionally. There— That could mean many more complications."

Inner chemicals? Willow silently cursed the Healer for not knowing more accurate terms. "Hormones?"

"Among others."

"And you have no idea what it means?"

Eleanor closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "Lady Willow—"

" _Just_  Willow."

"I never studied medicine. In my day, women barely studied  _anything_. What I know, I know through instinct. I do not know what would have been the proper terms of  _my_  day, let alone yours. Please, do not be angry with me if I cannot explain things better."

"Sorry." She was right; Willow couldn't expect a woman who had spent six centuries in isolation to know advanced medical terms. Or even  _common_  medical terms, for that matter. When Eleanor had lived in the world, they'd still been blaming humours for everything and leeches were the best most doctors could offer. "It's just—"

"She is your heart-sister, and you are worried," Eleanor said gently. She rose from the couch and glided across the carpet to Willow's chair. "You must rest."

"No, I'm—"

"I will not wake her until this evening at the earliest. Rest. Buffy will need your strength."

"I'm not—"

The last thing Willow saw before she fell asleep was Eleanor's hand coming toward her.

***

When Willow woke, the light outside the windows said it was late afternoon, and she was still in the chair—just as Xander was still on the couch, and Giles was in the corner, although he'd finally stretched out on the floor. Someone had laid blankets over them, tucked a pillow under Giles' head, and the cat had migrated to Xander's chest.

Willow stretched lazily, noticing absently that she wasn't as sore as she should be after twelve hours in a chair. Eleanor must have the—

_Eleanor_.

The events of the past few days came flooding back, a load of worry and grief slamming into her. She groaned and held her head in her hands, trying to banish the relentless images.

"Will?" She looked up. Xander was sitting up, squinting blearily at her; the dislodged cat was pouncing on his feet in revenge. "What— _ow!_ " He jerked his feet out from under the cat. "What time is it?"

"Afternoon. Early evening, maybe." She hadn't had a chance to put her watch on, and the library had no clocks.

"Huh." He threw back his blanket. "I wonder where Ellie—"

" _Yaaah!_ " Giles jumped up, wielding his pillow like a weapon, looking desperately around. "Where is it?" he demanded. "Where did it—"

"It was a dream, Giles."

"Huh?" He reached for his head. "I have a headache—"

"That happens when you drink yourself to sleep," Willow said dryly.

"I did—" He grimaced. "Oh, dear Lord, I did."

"It's okay, Giles, we gave up on any delusions of you being a proper stuffy Watcher a long time ago." Giles scowled at Xander.

Eleanor's voice cut through the beginnings of that argument. "Good. You're all awake." Willow looked to the top of the stairs. Eleanor stood there, watching them with a tolerantly amused expression. "I am ready to wake her."

"Is she okay?"

"She has been sleeping these past hours. Like you."

"And did  _you_  get any rest?" Xander asked. He sounded kind of like Giles did when the Watcher was lecturing Buffy on how  _she_  needed to rest.

"Several hours' worth. Matilda will verify that I have been into Buffy's room only to be sure she still slept peacefully."

"Good, 'cause the last thing I need is Matthias mistaking me for a blood donor."

"Matthias would never bite you without my permission." That was said so seriously that for a startled moment Willow wondered if Eleanor actually used that threat to keep Xander in line. Then she saw Xander's grin and the smile hovering around Eleanor's lips. A cozy little in-joke, then. If they started holding hands...

_If they start holding hands, throwing up is going to jump several hundred spots on my to-do list._

"Come now," Eleanor said, and disappeared into the shadowed hallway.

"You up to climbing stairs, Giles?" Xander asked, but Giles was already three steps up. "Damn. Wish I could move that fast with a hangover." He extended a hand to Willow. "Need help?" Willow smiled, and accepted his hand, though she really didn't need the help to stand. She'd missed Xander so much.

Matilda wasn't in Buffy's room, which was just as well, considering that it was getting a little cramped. "I have noticed a tendency for the housekeeper to panic," Eleanor explained, "especially if she cannot explain what she sees."

"Yeah," Willow agreed. "We really should find a housekeeper who's not scared of magic." Xander snorted.

Eleanor placed her hand gently on Buffy's forehead and closed her eyes. Willow watched closely, but if the telltale blue glow of the Healer's powers was there, it was too faint to see.

Buffy's breathing hitched. She moved beneath the pile of blankets—

And then she sat straight up, eyes wide. "Get away from me!" she shouted. Eleanor obediently backed away.

"Buffy?" Giles elbowed his way in front of Eleanor. "Are you all right?"

She squinted up at him. "Giles?" she whispered. "Is—is that you?" Her hand reached up to touch his cheek. "You're real—oh,  _God_ , Giles, you're real—" She threw her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder.


	11. Chapter 11

Buffy cried herself back to sleep—but even in sleep she clung to Giles so tightly that he couldn't extricate himself. Not without breaking bones. Possibly not hers.

"That can't be good," Xander finally said, saying what they were all thinking anyway.

"I have healed her body," Eleanor said. "The mind is more difficult. I  _can_  ease the trauma, but it will take a few days. It is easier to do that while she sleeps. She needs the sleep, as well, to heal. Unless you wish to question her as soon as possible."

"No." Giles looked down at Buffy. He looked old and tired, sitting there with Buffy clutching his shirt like a small child trying to make him stay put, and Willow wondered if they were all wearing the strain of this so badly. "It's more important that she heals. An unstable— Do everything you can. Please."

"Of course. And the child?"

Shock rippled through the room. " _What?_ " they chorused.

Eleanor blinked at the reaction. "She is with child," she said simply.

"You can tell that? Already?" Xander asked.

"Bloody hell," Giles whispered. He looked down at Buffy again. "I—it— Dear God. I don't know, Eleanor. I just—"

"Can you get rid of it?" Everybody turned to stare at her, and that was when Willow realized that the callous question had popped out of  _her_  mouth. "Before Buffy knows about it. She doesn't need that on top of everything else."

"I  _can_ ," Eleanor said, her voice as cold as ice, "but I will  _not_. That is the Slayer's decision."

"She's just been  _raped!_ " Willow shouted. "You can't  _possibly_  expect her to—"

"I cannot do harm!" Eleanor yelled back. "And  _you_  cannot speak for what will harm her and what will not! Only she can make that decision!"

"Ellie, calm down." Xander stepped between them. "Will—"

"Having a rapist's baby  _will_  harm her, you ignorant cow! You—"

" _Will!_ " Xander grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. "Let's not argue this with Buffy in the room, okay, girls? Because if you startle Buffy awake, she will probably  _decapitate_  Giles before she recognizes him, and then she'll come after us. She's had  _enough_  to deal with for one week. She needs her rest.  _Doesn't she?_ " Willow and Eleanor exchanged glances—sullen, but each silently acknowledging the truth of Xander's words. "Now. Ellie needs rest too— Don't look at me that way, Ellie, this isn't the Sanctuary. I am not giving Matthias and Wilhelm a reason to beat me up."

"But—Xander—" Willow began.

"Out. Both of you. Giles?"

"I'm fine. Go on."

Xander nodded and gave Willow a little shove towards the door. "There. Get. Ellie." He took her arm, and steered her towards the door. In the hallway, he carefully closed the heavy door to Buffy's room, then pushed them farther down the hallway.

" _Xander_."

He stopped. "Now, look here,  _both_  of you. The  _last_  thing Buffy needs is people arguing over her."

"Xander, she—"

"Willow, shut up." The order was so unexpected, so un-Xander, that her jaw dropped and she could only stare at him. "Is that your idea of helping her? Picking a fight with Ellie while she's lying there?"

"She's asleep—"

"That doesn't mean she can't hear you!" he snapped. "She needs to know we're there for her,  _focused_  on her, and this kind of stupid fight isn't going to help! And  _you_." He turned on Ellie. "You told us to keep vengeance out of the room earlier." There was as much anger as he spoke to the Healer as there had been when he talked to Willow, which made her feel oddly satisfied. "Well, if I can't have vengeful  _thoughts_  around her, you two are definitely not having a catfight. Is that clear?"

Eleanor inclined her head, then headed down the hall. "You're not going to let her back—"

"No, she's going to find a room. Where I am going to lecture her very loudly about overextending herself in a few minutes. What the hell has gotten into you?"

"She's got no right—"

"Will, the Healer is just as stubborn as a Slayer. She makes up her mind, there's no changing it. If she thinks Buffy has to make the decision, all the shouting in the world is not going to convince her otherwise."

"You think she's  _right?_  Xander Harris—"

"I think there are other ways to show your concern. Ways that don't involve yelling in front of a hurt woman. You brought us here to make sure Buffy's okay, Will. But that means you have to trust Ellie to know what's best—"

"She barely knows Buffy!"

"And are you so sure Buffy would want an abortion?" he shot back. "Are you absolutely, positively sure that you know her mind that well?"

"She'd never have to know! It's for her own good!"

"Uh-huh. Remember what happened the last time you tried that? You know, when you brought her back from  _heaven_  and then decided the thing to do was erase her memories?"

"Xander—"

"No. Not again." There was authority in Xander's voice, a power that Willow didn't recall hearing before, one she wasn't sure she wanted to challenge. The Sanctuary was doing this to him.  _Eleanor_  was doing this to him. "Look, all that matters right now is making sure Buffy is okay. And if I have to beat you two up every day to make sure you keep your focus, I'm going to. Understand?"

" _Xander_ —"

"Am I clear?" he asked. His eyes were hard, and there was ice in his voice. "Because something tells me if I tell that housekeeper that you're a danger to Buffy, all the witchcraft in the world won't get you in that room."


	12. Chapter 12

Stung by Xander's reprimand, Willow stayed away from Buffy's room. And the room Xander and Eleanor finally settled into. And Giles'.  _And_  Matilda's. In fact, she was determined to stay away from that entire wing, if she had to. She avoided meals, too.

She  _wasn't_  sulking. She didn't sulk. Faith had sulked. And she wasn't brooding, either, that was Angel's gimmick. No, she was righteously annoyed.

The fact that even the cats were skittering out of her path—well, that just meant everybody was going as batty as Xander. It certainly didn't mean she was  _sulking_. Just because she refused to kowtow to Xander's girlfriend—

_You know,_  said a quiet, annoyingly reasonable voice in the back of her head,  _you had this problem with Anya._

"Shut up," she snarled.  _Why can't Xander fall for normal girls? Why is it always demons and ex-demons and demon healers?_

And why was it making Xander so—so—so fucking authoritative? So sure of himself that he'd give  _her_  orders? So he had yet another supernatural girlfriend. Eleanor was immortal and six centuries behind the times and lived with a pack of vampires slavishly devoted to her well-being! Why had she needed  _Xander?_  And why—

_And why does it bother you so much?_  that pesky voice asked again.

_Oh, shut up,_  she told herself sternly.

"Willow." She turned around to see Giles standing behind her. "Buffy's ready to talk to us. Are you coming, or do you plan on—"

"I'm not sulking!" she snapped, and stalked past him.

"Of course not," he said, and she very nearly  _heard_  him roll his eyes. "My mistake."

***

Buffy was propped up on a stack of pillows, the remains of a lunch tray balanced awkwardly in her lap. The bruises were all gone, her hair was clean again, but she was still pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Ellie sat beside the bed, her chair parked where the nightstand usually was. Though the Healer sat with both hands primly in her lap, and Buffy wasn't touching her, Willow had the sudden disconcerting impression that Buffy was clinging to Ellie's presence, and that bothered her as much as anything else. Two weeks ago, Buffy had still been determined to find a way to destroy the Healer.

"Buffy, I—" There was just no easy way to start this conversation. "Are you okay?" Willow asked finally.

Buffy managed a wan smile. "I will be. Ellie's helping." She reached out for Willow's hand, gave it a weak squeeze. "I'll be all right, Will. Really."

Willow searched her friend's face, looking for some hint that Buffy was actually telling her the truth, not just feeding her a platitude.

"And don't you start truth-spelling me either," Buffy added, with a hint of her old fire.

Willow smiled, mostly to cover her sheer relief. "There's my Buffy. Can I?" Buffy nodded, and Willow sat on the edge of the bed; after a moment's thought, Willow took the lunch tray away and handed it off to Xander. Xander set it on a table and pulled up a chair for himself, leaving Giles standing. "Are you up to—"

Buffy nodded, but her eyes became distant, as if she no longer saw her bedroom and her visitors. "He wasn't human. His eyes—they started glowing. Before he injected that stuff into me."

"The potion took immediate effect?" Giles asked. His voice was flat. He was trying his best to be clinical, poor guy.

"I think he used a lot more than you ever did."

"You know what it was?"

"He told me. He—he got some thrill off telling me what he was planning. In detail." She shook her head, seemed to come out of her daze suddenly. "I know we have to talk about it, but I don't want to go into details."

"Of course," Giles said. "Was there anything familiar about him? Anything that might—"

Buffy made a strangled noise. "He looked human," she whispered. "He—it—he looked like my father." That was all she could manage; she squeezed her eyes shut, and her body went tense. Eleanor placed a hand gently on her shoulder. Blue light flickered beneath her fingers for an instant, seemed to soak in. Buffy relaxed. "I thought it  _was_  Dad. Until—until the eyes—" Shock filled the room with silence; what could they possibly say to that? "I think he was some kind of demon. Nothing we've come up against before. Capable of taking human form and not losing hold of it through—" She faltered again. "Through everything. If it hadn't been for the eyes...."

She let the words trail off, and swiped at her eyes. There was another flicker of blue light from Eleanor's hand. "Yellow," she said softly. "Yellow eyes. Whites and irises. The color kept shifting. Like fire. I've never seen anything like it. And he—he knew things, about me and Mom and Dad, things that a random demon shouldn't know."

"Could it—" Giles hesitated, for so long that everyone in the room turned to look at him expectantly. "Buffy, could it have possibly  _been_  your father? Possessed?"

"I don't know," she said softly. Brokenly. "He could have been. He—he took me out to dinner. Tried to convince me to go to Spain. And when I wouldn't go—that was when he injected me."

"So maybe he was trying to get you to go with him willingly?" Xander asked.

"If you'd said you were going to visit your father—"

"We wouldn't have looked for you for  _weeks_ ," Willow finished Giles' sentence. "Nobody would have even known you were missing."

"Not until the trail was ice-cold," Xander said flatly. "This kinda screams of somebody who's done his Slayer research."

"It does at that," Giles agreed. "Buffy, if it's all right, I'm going to call a Watcher I know in Barcelona and—"

"Do it," she whispered. "I need to know." Giles nodded, opened his mouth to say something—then thought better of it and left.

Willow looked at Xander. Just  _looked_ , not saying a word. "You guys probably need to have a girly talk, don't you?" he asked, standing and picking up the tray. "I'll just take this down to Matilda. If I haven't found the kitchen by dinner, send out a rescue party." Buffy managed another small smile.

Willow got up to close the door and lock it. Locking herself in a room with the Healer was probably not her best idea, but she didn't want anyone interrupting this. It was going to be awkward enough.  _Besides,_  she told herself,  _I can make myself behave for Buffy's sake._  "Buffy, there's something else."

Buffy looked at her for a moment, then at Eleanor, and back at Willow. Her eyes were dark. "What else could there possibly be, Will?"

Willow glanced at Eleanor as she resumed her spot on the edge of the bed. "Eleanor—she says—" She took a deep breath, took Buffy's hand and squeezed it tightly. "Eleanor says you're pregnant."

"What?" Buffy looked up at Eleanor. "I—is that true?"

"It is."

"But it's only been a couple of days! You can't possibly—"

Another flash of blue light beneath Eleanor's fingers. "There is magic at work. Powerful magic. It is accelerating the pregnancy."

Buffy closed her eyes, seemed to sink into the pillows. "Oh, God." It was all she could manage for several heartbeats. " _God_."

"Buffy, if you tell her to, she can fix it," Willow went on, "but you have to tell her, she won't do it without your permission."

"Fix it?" Buffy repeated blankly.

She didn't understand. The shock was too much. "Terminate the pregnancy," Willow said, as gently as she could. "You don't  _have_  to have it."

There was a spark in Buffy's eyes, a sudden surge of energy that made her look like herself for the first time since she'd appeared on the doorstep. "No," she said flatly.

" _What?_  Buffy, he—he  _raped_  you! You can't  _possibly_ —"

"I was there, Will," came the terse answer. "I know what happened."

"I just meant—"

"I know what you meant." Buffy took a deep breath. "And I know that seems like the most important thing, but it—it's just not. Not for me. I'm keeping this baby."

"But it's half-demon!"

"It's half  _me!_ " Buffy snapped. "And I— Will, I've got to believe that can make the difference. I've  _got_  to."

Willow glared at Eleanor. "You're doing this, aren't you? Your archaic morals don't let you believe in abortion, so you're making her think she has to keep it!"

"Will, no!" Buffy pushed herself up. "This isn't Ellie, this is me!  _My_  decision!"

"But it doesn't make sense! Why would—"

"I'm never going to have a normal life," Buffy reminded her. "Half my relationships have been with the undead. None of the living guys could handle me or my job. This could be my only chance  _ever_  to have a baby, and I'm not going to turn away from it!"

"Buffy, I understand that, but—"

"Three years ago, I would have let her. I was the only Slayer, and I had family. I couldn't  _be_  a mother. Now we have all the kids, and a new Council— It's not  _all_  on me anymore, Will. I'm the Primary, not the only. I can  _do_  this, and I am. I am going to have this baby."


	13. Chapter 13

_4 years A.S._

Dean and Sam just sat there, staring at them, when she and Willow finished. "I—wow," Sam said finally. "It—"

"Lady, that is the biggest bunch of bullshit I've ever heard. And I hear a  _lot_."

"Dean!"

"It's okay, Sam," Buffy said quietly, "I know how it sounds. It's a lot to take in."

"You should have tried  _living_  through it," Willow muttered.

"You live through something, your story makes  _sense_  afterward," Dean spat. "This doesn't."

"Magical healing isn't unheard of," Sam pointed out. "You of all people should know that."

" _That's_  your problem with her story?" Dean asked incredulously. "The  _healing?_  Demon rape, a woman keeping half-demon kids, and the  _healing_  is your problem?" He glared at Buffy. "No woman who  _knew_  what a demon was would  _ever_  keep the kids."

Buffy studied him for an eternity measured in heartbeats. "Maybe you don't know as much about demons as you think you do, Dean," she said finally. "Nothing's simple black and white in this job. You have to learn to see the gray."

"This is  _beyond_  gray." Dean wasn't  _quite_  snarling, but it was close. He was going to start taking this  _really_  personally in a minute.

Time to change the subject. "What happened to your father?" Sam asked. "Did you find him? Exorcise the demon?"

Buffy's eyes darkened. "It was too late," she said softly. "The Watchers investigated. There was a fire a week before the demon appeared. Dad and his wife and their baby were killed. Nobody there even knew that he had a daughter from his first marriage. That—" She sighed. "That made me  _more_  determined to keep you. I didn't have any family left then. None at all. I had friends—I still have friends, obviously, but.... I wanted a family again. I wanted  _my_  family. I thought it was my only chance." Sam glanced at Dean. Some of the hostility faded. If there was one thing Dean understood, it was family. "My parents were gone. My sister wasn't really—well, she was gone too. All I had in the world was Willow and Giles and Xander, and Xander had gone to live with Ellie."

"The Healer." There was something in Dean's voice that made Sam antsy. "Let me see if I'm getting this straight," Dean said. "There's this chick somewhere who makes it her business to heal  _vampires_ , and you haven't killed her yet?"

"I was going to. Then she—well, she's saved my life twice at this point. Makes things awkward."

"That's no reason to leave her alone!"

"Dean, she's like the Slayer used to be. Even if we found a way to kill her—and believe me when I say we've  _tried_ —she wouldn't be cold before there was another one. There's no way to prevent that."

"A new one wouldn't know what she was doing. It'd at least slow her down."

Buffy swore. "Did you miss the part where one of my best friends lives with the woman?"

"Maybe you should be working harder to knock some sense into him!"

Willow snorted. "Yeah, right. Because the man who nearly married a former vengeance demon is going to listen to us  _now_  when he didn't then."

"He married a  _what?_ "

"Will," Buffy groaned. "Did you  _have_  to bring  _that_  up?"

"He  _married_  a  _demon?_ " Dean asked.

" _Ex_ -demon, and no, he left her at the altar, and—oh,  _hell_. I can fill you in later, if you really want all the details."

"You know, I think we'll pass."

"We will?" Sam asked.

"Yeah." Dean stood. "Maybe next time we're in Cleveland, we'll stop by and you can tell us your war stories. C'mon, Sam."

Sam glanced at his watch, and sighed. This late, they'd never find a motel. Dean either meant to sleep in the car or drive half the night, just to get away from here.

"You're welcome to stay the night," Buffy said. "We've got plenty of room."

Dean shot a glance at Sam.  _Oh, no you don't._  "Sounds good to me," Sam said, jumping at the offer, steadfastly ignoring Dean's glare. He hadn't seen Dean so effectively combine panic and anger since the last time Sam had wrestled him onto a plane.

"We  _really_  couldn't—"

"Of course we can," Sam interrupted. "Dean just hates imposing."

"Does he." Buffy's lips twitched, as if she were trying not to smile. "Well, it's not an imposition."

"We're not your—"

"You're hunters. I'm a Slayer. Consider it a professional courtesy. You think we have four spare rooms because we're running a boarding house?"

 _Oh, she's good._  Claiming she was doing it because they were her sons would have just pissed Dean off. Making it a matter of  _manners_....

Well, he was still going to be pissed, but not as much.

"Fine," Dean relented. "But just tonight. We leave in the morning."

"We'll worry about that in the morning," Buffy replied evenly. "Separate rooms, or together?"

"Separate," Sam answered promptly, just as Dean said "Together."

"Dean!" Sam glared at his brother, and Willow made a choked-off sound that probably started as a laugh. "They have the room, and for once I'd like to sleep without listening to you snore."

"I do  _not_  snore! You're the one—"

"You can still sneak into each other's rooms and have deep discussions about how disturbed this makes you." Willow  _did_  laugh when Dean stared at her. "We'd be doing the exact same thing, you know."

"Meanwhile, I have patrols to make," Buffy said jauntily. "A Slayer's work is never done. See you in the morning. Sleep well."

"I have some stuff I need to do too," Willow added.

"You know," Dean said, glaring at her, "this 'mysterious psychic' act of yours is getting old."

She raised an eyebrow. "Well, if you must know," she said archly, "I have to go spend some quality time in my closet."

Sam thought Buffy was going to pop a blood vessel from trying not to laugh at Dean's expression. "Patrol," she finally managed to choke out. "Must patrol." She headed for the door.

Sam looked at Dean, looked at Willow, and made his decision quickly. "I'll get the bags," he volunteered.

Because if he didn't get out of here,  _he_  was going to laugh in Dean's face.


	14. Chapter 14

The room had that empty, hotel-room feeling, meaning that this  _was_  an actual guest room and nobody lived here on even a part-time basis, but no hotel on earth would decorate a room this way.

For starters,  _purple wallpaper?_  Not garish bright purple, granted, a very restrained, somewhat dull shade, but still clearly purple.

For another, the quilt on the bed was Halloween-themed. As in, it had pumpkins and bats and ghosts and spiderwebs all over it. Then there were the giant framed fairy posters that hung on the walls. Including a very large, very blue one of a scantily-clad Goth-girl fairy right over the bed. And to add insult to injury, the room smelled like vanilla and strawberries.

Vanilla and fucking  _strawberries_.

"Can definitely tell this is a woman's house," Dean muttered, setting his bag down.

He paced his room, swearing at the fairies, for thirty minutes, to make sure Buffy was gone and Willow was absorbed in—whatever, then slipped through the apartment and let himself in Sam's room. Sam had the blue-and-white, Hanukkah-and-dragons version of his purple-and-blue Halloween-and-fairies room. Same smell, though. What were the others? Christmas-and-vampires? Easter-and-unicorns? "Come on, dude, let's—oops."

Sam grabbed for a blue holiday-themed towel and wrapped it quickly around himself. Dean bit his lip to keep down any remarks about the positioning of that menorah. "You know, it's one thing to barge in when we're sharing a room, but when we're not, you think you might learn to knock?" Sam asked irritably.

"You took a  _shower?_ "

"I like being clean. Sue me." Sam raked wet hair out of his eyes. "I thought we were staying the night."

" _Stay the night?_ " Dean yelped. "Are you  _insane?_ "

"No, I'm sleepy, and this is cheaper than a motel and more comfortable than the car." He pointed at the bed. "See that? It's a  _quilt_ , Dean. An honest-to-God  _quilt_. Not to mention, it smells better than—"

"Son of a bitch," Dean muttered. "You  _believe_  that bullshit story, don't you?"

Sam sighed. "Will you give me a  _little_  credit? Of course I don't."

"Then why—"

"Dammit, Dean—" Sam broke that off. "I'm  _not kidding_. I want a night to myself. Just one night that's  _not_  in a motel. One night when something's not trying to kill me and I'm not listening to you bitch about me waking you up with nightmares. Too much?"

"I don't bitch that much."

"The hell you don't."

"Fine. Separate rooms from here on out. You get your own damn credit—"

" _And_  I want to know for sure. That means DNA tests."

That, Dean had been expecting. Sam didn't have any memories of Mom; of course he wasn't going to be able to automatically discount Buffy's nonsense. "She's not our mother! She  _can't_  possibly be! And if you think for one second that—"

"Buffy's too nice to let her keep believing we're somebody we're not."

Dean didn't think Buffy was all that nice, personally, but then, Sam hadn't been on the receiving end of the woman's grip. "Is that all? Is that really it?"

"No," Sam admitted. Dean braced himself for some nonsense about finding their roots, needing a maternal figure in their lives, but he was entirely unprepared for what Sam said next. "The demon that kidnapped her had yellow eyes.  _Yellow eyes_ , Dean."

Dean's brain skidded to such a violent stop he imagined he could feel it hit the inside of his skull. It took several moments for him to get it back in gear. "Son of a  _bitch!_  I missed that. I fucking  _missed_  that!"

"Well, if you hadn't been concentrating so hard on finding things  _wrong_  with their story—"

"Shut up." A few thousand thoughts careened around the inside of his head, all colliding with each other. He finally managed to grab one and force it into words. " _The_  demon."

"The demon."

"Kidnapped and  _raped_  that poor woman? That's not its usual M.O."

"Maybe it's part of a different plan. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with Mom. Hell, maybe it's an entirely different yellow-eyed demon. But we need to find out."

"Yeah, you're right," Dean admitted. "Probably not, though. You  _did_  have a vision."

"Nightmare."

"There's a difference with you?"

"I have had nightmares that weren't visions."

"Since Jess? Name one."

"Dammit, Dean, if you don't want to stay here, just  _say_  so."

"Fine. I'd rather get on a plane and fly around the world than stay here," Dean said, and he meant those words with every fiber of his being. "Something is  _not_  right here, Sammy. Can't you feel it?"

"The only thing I feel is the promise of a bed that's not lumpy."

"And you call yourself a psychic."

"Dean—" Sam choked that off. " _This_  is where the vision wanted us. It led us here."

"I don't care!" Dean shouted. Sam gave him a  _look_ , and he belatedly remembered that this wasn't their usual kind of accommodation. Shouting was probably just going to attract Willow's attention. "I don't  _care_ ," he repeated, in a softer voice. "I just don't want to be here."

"Are you going to give up our first chance in months to find its trail?"

Dean glared at him. Sam knew the answer to that. And Sam knew Dean knew Sam knew. "I'm getting a motel in the morning."

"If it makes you feel better."

"Quit humoring me."

Sam grinned. "Isn't that what little brothers are for?"

 

***

Dean stalked back to his room, and would have slammed the door, if it weren't that he knew Sam would come to see what was wrong.  _Idiot_ , he thought, and wasn't sure if he meant Sam or himself. "Stay the night," he muttered. "Have a free meal. You can leave if you want. Yeah, if my stupid baby brother doesn't immediately bond with a woman who named her job after a lousy metal band and want to stay here forever and have DNA tests and family dinners and fucking  _holidays_." He threw his jacket at a chair and displaced a tortoiseshell cat. "Of course," he said to it as he kicked his shoes across the room. "What's a witch without a cat?"

The cat did not seem terribly upset; she just hopped onto the bed and curled up into a ball, right on top of a bat. "That's  _my_  bed, Priss." She yawned delicately. "Is there anything in this house that's not against me?" he demanded. Priss ignored him. "Son of a  _bitch_."

Well, he wasn't going to let it get to him. The layout meant that the bathroom attached to this guest room was all his, and damned if he wasn't going to enjoy  _that_  little luxury. For however long it took him to pry Sam's idiot ass out of here.

Not until right before he fell asleep, the pillow beneath his head covered with a quilted sham that also had a giant black bat on it, with Priss trying to groom the moisture out of his damp hair, did he remember, just for an instant before it was gone again, that no one had told him the cat's name.

 

 

***

It was supposed to be a walk-in closet. Willow had sacrificed the space to make it into a proper workroom. She had gotten spoiled by the coven's setup in England; she wasn't willing to return to the makeshifts she'd endured in Sunnydale. Her wardrobe would survive, and besides, she wasn't as much of a clotheshorse as Buffy.

Incense from the last circle still lent its sharp scent to the air. She lit another stick on the altar, then began taking supplies from the cabinets, all the components necessary to reinforce a memory-block. Ever since Dean had blurted "Mommy?" in the parlor, she had been unable to rid herself of nagging suspicions.

 _Be honest, Willow. You mean nagging_ fears.

She set out the components in the proper order, lit several candles—blue, green, purple, black; nothing active, nothing warm, not for this—and turned out the light so that electrical interference would be minimal. She seated herself before the altar, lit three sticks of incense from the largest purple candle, and whispered a cantrip that allowed her to enter trance without effort.

The closet and its altar faded from sight, gradually replaced by the currents of magic that flowed through the world. She extended her awareness through the apartment, seeking the sleeping minds in the guest rooms. First Dean, then Sam. She nudged them farther into sleep, then began exploring, looking for the spells she had cast so long ago.

The blocks appeared as faceted crystal cocoons, tucked away deep in the boys' psyches, glowing softly—blue for Dean, green for Sam. But where Sam's block was whole and unflawed, the one in Dean's mind was damaged, dark sapphire rather than sky-blue, the surface razed and cracked as if someone had taken a hammer to it. Occasional wisps of blue light marked the trail of an escaping memory, seeping out into Dean's mind, insinuating itself into the memories that made  _Dean Winchester_. He couldn't access them consciously, not yet, but those newly-released memories lay hidden, tiny booby traps that would respond to God knew what trigger—and once active, they would open the way for more memories, further weakening the block, like a leaking dam being worn away by the very water it was meant to hold back.

Willow bit her lip to keep the swearing from disturbing the delicate spellwork. Liam was not the danger. Alex was.

But Liam surely remembered what Alex had done to him. If Dean transferred any of Liam's anger about that attack to Sam...if the power that Liam had never realized suddenly appeared now that he was grown....

She whispered the incantation, a variation of the one she had once used on two small boys. Magic welled up from the earth and soaked into her, using her body and soul as a filter; she gathered the cleansed power in her "hands." It began to glow blue, the bright blue that  _should_  have been the color of Dean's block, became sticky, and she spread the gummy stuff thickly over the cracks, sealing them.

She could not stop the memories that had already escaped. But she could try to keep more from escaping.


	15. Chapter 15

Sam came out of his room the next morning to find Dean standing in the living room. He didn't look like he'd slept at all. Actually, he didn't look like he'd slept for a week. "You look terrible."

"I'm fine," Dean snapped, rubbing his neck. "Just didn't sleep very well. I think your stupid dreams are rubbing off on me."

"Nightmares?"

"No, just bad dreams and a cat that couldn't figure out my head wasn't a kitty bed." The front door swung open, and a tired and dirty Buffy came in. " _Some_ body made it a full night."

"Slayers naturally work the nightshift," Buffy said, leaning against the door a moment. "Had to chase a would-be vampire king through the sewers. He just would  _not_  die."

"Inconsiderate bastard," Dean observed dryly.

"They usually are." She dusted herself off. "I am going to take a shower and get the sewer slime off me." She picked at a stain on the front of her shirt. "And I liked this shirt, too. Stupid vamp. Throws slime and then dusts all over me."

"Dusts?"

"Vamps are conveniently self-cleaning. Stake 'em and they turn into tidy piles of dust, just need a broom. Or a DustBuster."

"Stakes?" Dean asked, with a glare at Sam. "You can't kill vampires with stakes. You have to behead them—"

"Well, that works too. There was this time with a nail file— You don't want to know that. But staking is pretty efficient. Easy to get the hang of. And it doesn't have to be special, you can stake a vamp with a table leg if you have to— Why are the two of you looking at me that way?"

"That didn't work on the vampires we tangled with," Sam said slowly. "They weren't even really bothered by sunlight—"

"Sounds like a nest of  _katarr_." Willow poked her head in from the kitchen. "It's easy to confuse them, especially if you're ama—er—not trained in telling the difference. Real vamps avoid hunters."

"Really?" Dean's voice perked up a little at that.

"They find them boorish and unsophisticated. Breakfast's ready."

" _Now_  I'm insulted," Dean muttered. "They  _said_ —"

"Most  _katarr_  believe they're the superior form of vampire, so of course that's what they tell people."

"Of course," Dean said faintly, and Sam swallowed a grin. Dean would never forgive him if he laughed.

"Come on," Willow said. "Cereal's getting warm."

Dean muttered something, but took a step toward the kitchen—and then stopped.

"Dean?" Buffy asked. "You okay?"

"I just found out I've been killing things I thought were vampires, only they weren't because real vampires don't think I'm important enough to bother with," he snapped. "Give me a minute to recover my dignity, would you?"

Buffy raised an eyebrow. "He's always like this before the first gallon of coffee," Sam apologized, and when she turned away, he glared at his brother. "What the  _fuck_  was that?" he hissed.

"I don't like being treated like a fucking amateur, okay?" Dean snarled, so viciously that Sam actually stepped back. "We hunt and we're good at it and these two are  _laughing_  at us!"

"We didn't mean it like that, Dean," Buffy said soothingly. "I mean, there's two different kinds of  _real_  vamps, and we didn't even know that until after we met Eleanor. Nobody can know everything—" She stopped, studying him. "Are you  _sure_  you're okay? You look kinda pale."

Sam looked at her, confused, then looked at Dean again. He  _was_  pale, and starting to sway a bit. "Dean?" he asked, worried.

"I'm fine, just—give me—" His hand shot for the nearest wall to steady himself.

" _Dean!_ "

Dean looked up at him. "Who are you?" he asked softly.

"Who am— Dean, it's me, it's Sam! Don't play around—"

Dean shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. "I'm not—I don't—" His eyes rolled back, his knees buckled, and he toppled slowly forward.

Buffy caught him as easily as if he were a child. "Will! 911!" Carefully she lowered him to the floor. "Dean!" she shouted, right in his ear, and lightly slapped him. "Tell me he has a history of this."

"Of  _what?_ " Sam screeched. "Falling over? Only  _after_  things hit him!"

Willow was there, but instead of a phone she had a copper bowl in one hand, and whatever was in it stank. "No use calling. I felt the backlash. His—" Sam barely caught the sidelong glance she shot him. "This was magical."

"What happened?" Sam demanded. "Why—"

Willow dabbed the stuff on Dean's forehead, then ripped open his shirt and drew a symbol on his chest. It blazed black, then purple, then vanished. "That'll keep him stable for a few minutes. Long enough for you to get him back to bed."

"What—"

"You only have a few minutes, Sam! Go!"

***

Willow waited for Sam's attention to be wholly focused on dragging Dean to his room, then she grabbed Buffy by the arm and dragged her out of earshot. "The block collapsed."

Buffy stared at her. "No. That  _can't_ —  _How?_ "

"I didn't plan for them to ever actually meet us! His blocks were already damaged when they got here, I don't know why. Seeing you must have triggered full collapse—"

"Goddammit, Will, you should have—"

"I was up half the night trying to strengthen them! It didn't take! Why do you think I had the  _sivreth_  ready? It's not something that keeps, you know, after a day or so it starts growing this icky red slime—"

"Jesus, Will, what—" She went pale, and whispered, "What if he's Alex? What are we going to do? I can't—"

"He's not."

"You don't know that! You told me yourself, you erased your own memories of which one wound up younger! You can't  _possibly_ —"

"I gave Liam that talisman Dean's wearing," Willow interrupted. "I was trying to calm him down, I meant to take it back, but it took so much power finding that Winchester man, and doing all the memory work— I didn't even remember I gave it to him until I saw it."

"You  _forgot?_  My God, Will—"

"It doesn't matter if  _we_  know! What matters is— We can't let Sam find out."

"Why not?"

"All it took for the block in Dean's mind to shatter was  _seeing_  you. That triggered a memory from Liam, and all the rest of the block came tumbling down, like an avalanche. Sam's are still intact, but if we actually  _tell_  Sam who he is, it might be too much. The block could shatter and—"

" _And?_ " Buffy's voice had gone an octave higher.

"And let Alex loose."


	16. Chapter 16

Buffy didn't patrol that night. The vamps would be in disarray for awhile yet and the demons in Cleveland weren't half as smart as the ones in Sunnydale. The babies could handle it. She had her boys back, and she was taking the night off.

_Her boys._  Ridiculous way to think of two men who towered over her, who she hadn't seen since she could pick them up—well, she probably could  _still_  pick them up if she put her mind to it, but they'd fight. Try to, anyway. Sam had tried, when she and Willow were finally able to pry him from Dean's side and send him to bed.

_I forgot how handy it is to have a witch in the house when you have stubborn little boys._  Willow hadn't forgotten that sleep spell. A few words, Sam was out like the proverbial light, and she and Willow had dragged him off to his bed.  _Little heavier than he used to be, though,_  she thought with a rueful smile.

She had taken up Sam's vigil at Dean's bedside; the poor boy had been fighting them so hard, even as he was falling asleep, that if it was that important to him that somebody stay with Dean, she was perfectly happy to help. It was the first time she'd been able to help her boys in two years.

Two years. She'd tried her best to mourn them and move on.  _If I do this, you can never look for them_ , Willow had said when she promised to hide them. Buffy had accepted that as the cost of knowing they would live—that, and her relationship with Giles. As soon as she had recovered from Alex's attack, she had forced the Council to assign her another Watcher. Her rage had been instrumental in making sure nobody but Willow wanted the assignment.

Two long years, during which she'd thrown all her rage, all her pain, into establishing the Cleveland "office." Two years of choking down every ounce of maternal feeling that couldn't be channeled into training the babies, of forcing her eyes to slide past January 24 on the calendar, of pretending not to see the scars on her stomach when she took a shower or got dressed. Two years of allowing herself to wonder about them only in her dreams, or in those rare silent moments alone when she could pretend she wasn't a Slayer. She had even spoken to Eleanor about it, once, but the Healer had gently reminded her that no one could fix mortal grief.

And now, out of the depths of her deepest dreams, they were back.

At two years, the boys should have been the equivalent of fourteen or fifteen; a few weeks before Alex turned, the coven had determined that the twins' accelerated growth was slowing to normal.

Instead, Dean was—in lived time—older than she was, and Sam only a year or so younger. Willow hadn't told her about the timeshift, only that she had taken the twins where no Watcher would think to look for them. And to put them with a  _hunter...._  Well, people said the line between brilliance and insanity was thin. Even if the old Council hadn't hated the renegades, who would think to look for two half-demon children among demon hunters?

"I can't show you how to hold your first stake now, can I?" The words echoed oddly in the silence of Dean's room. Liam had never been one for silence; even when he was absorbed in a book, he wanted music playing, or was singing or humming to himself. By Dean's restlessness, she suspected he might have kept that quirk. She should ask Sam. Maybe bring in a radio or CD player. "You've probably killed as many bad guys as I have. Maybe not a god, though. Of course, the one I ran into killed me. This the closest you've gotten to dying?"

There wasn't an answer. She didn't expect one, just like she hadn't expected one during those busy two days when the twins had simultaneously gotten chicken pox and grown three inches and slept through all of it. But that wasn't important.

He was here, and he was breathing, and he was safe. That was all that mattered.

The cat was curled up beside Dean, her head tucked into the hollow between his neck and shoulder.  _That_  had finally convinced her that Dean was Liam. It wasn't that she didn't trust Willow, or didn't believe her, but really, there was no reason to believe that the talisman had stayed with the same boy all these years.

But Priss hadn't cozied up to anybody, not even Willow, that way, not since the day Willow had taken the twins away. Priss had been Liam's kitten, heart and soul. They'd been inseparable, more like a boy and his puppy than a kitten; Priss ate when he ate, wouldn't use a litterbox that wasn't in Liam's room, slept on top of him, even played with the bubbles when he took a bath.

Alex's kitten had disappeared three days after its arrival.  _That probably should have been a hint._

"I hope you have better luck avoiding death than I do," she went on, not really sure why, except that she wanted to fill the silence. "I really don't recommend dying twice, by the way. It just confuses the hell out of you. Not to mention how hard it is to start living again when you get jerked out of heaven. Especially if you're broke and you get stuck working in the world's worst fast food chain.  _God_ , I wish you could hear me."

She took his hand in hers. She'd taken him to the Natural History Museum for his seventh birthday—seventh month, of course—and she still remembered how Liam had clung so tightly to her hand that he'd left fingernail gouges. Alex had wanted to go to an amusement park, so she'd put him in the care of Xander, and she'd taken Liam. It was the first time they'd dared take the twins any place really public; they'd been growing too fast, had been too young to know to not just blurt certain things to strangers. It had been just her and Liam, several hundred tourists, a lot of dinosaur skeletons, and the awe of a child seeing the wide world for the very first time.

"You're going to get past this. You hear me, Dean Winchester?  _You are going to get better_. I swore to Willow that I'd never go looking for you, but now that you're here, I'm not letting you go again. Not until I've gotten to know you."

Buffy swiped at her eyes, brushing away the tears. God help her. If only Giles had consented to leave her Liam, she would have let him have Alex.

_I'm not letting you go again. Never again._


	17. Chapter 17

Mommy was hurt and Alex was locked up and bespelled in his room, and Liam's fingers were burnt and his chest hurt where Alex had thrown him into the bureau and Alex had pulled out a handful of his hair but he wasn't going to tell anybody, not even Willow or Giles, until somebody told him that Mommy was okay. They'd sent him to Giles' room to get him out of the way, but they were too busy to pay attention and he'd snuck out and hid in the parlor, behind Giles' favorite armchair, clutching Priss tight.

"Hello, little one." A woman with long black hair and black eyes, wearing a funny-looking dress that reached the floor, knelt beside his hiding place.

"Who're you?" Liam didn't recognize this woman. But he knew her voice.

"I'm Eleanor." She gently pried his arms from around Priss and took his hands. "You should have said something, Liam." Blue light soaked from her hands into his, and the pain disappeared—and then the band of hurt around his chest eased, and the headache went away. "There, child."

"Thank you." Giles said to always be polite. Liam tried. Alex made it hard sometimes.

"Ellie!" somebody yelled. That was Uncle Xander, who had shown up not long ago, and he didn't sound right, his voice was all screechy. "Buffy—"

"Liam was hurt," she replied. She gave Liam a quick kiss on the forehead. "It's not your fault, child." She touched his forehead lightly, and the guilt seeped away, and most of the anger, and all the tears.

He knew her now. This was Uncle Xander's girlfriend. She hadn't come here before. Not in a long time. "I remember you," he said, and she looked at him and frowned. "Your voice. I heard it in the dark time."

"The dark time?" she asked.

"Before we were born. You came to help Mommy then too." He knew that look: she was surprised. Usually it was Alex surprising people like that, though. "Is she okay?"

"She will be, little one."

"And Alex?"

She smiled, but it was sad, like when Mommy talked about Grandma or aunt Dawn. "I'll try, Liam. I'll try."

" _Ellie!_ "

"I'm coming!" She gave his hair an affectionate ruffle, then left him there behind the chair with Priss still in his lap.

He ran his fingers through her fur, then stared at them. No blisters, no red, no sign of fire—

Fire.

_Fire!_

Mommy screamed and he ran out of his bedroom, only to have a bundle of blankets and brother shoved into his arms. "Take your brother outside as fast as you can!"

The house exploded—and then the fire trucks came, and Daddy took him and they sat on the car, watching the firemen try to put out the flames. It was cold and Sammy wouldn't go to sleep and Mommy never came out and Daddy sat there with the baby in his arms and cried silently, which made Dean worry because daddies didn't cry. Especially not  _his_  daddy—

He didn't  _have_  a Daddy—

The hell he didn't!

 _Stop it!_  he screamed, silently, unable to force the words out; his body wasn't obeying, it wouldn't listen to him, something was wrong—  _It didn't happen that way! I was never burned!_

 _I never had a father!_  Another voice—no, his own, screaming from somewhere deep inside, a place that hadn't been there a day ago.  _My mother never died!_

But he remembered her dying, remembered the way Daddy—

There was no Daddy, just Mommy and Willow and Giles and sometimes Uncle Xander—

Liam's memories exploded into his brain, a thousand tiny blue fires landing in the tinder of Dean's own memories. Nine months Liam had lived, such a tiny little lifetime, and it was enough to make everything shatter.

 _Stop it!_  he begged, helpless, as the memories began to burn and fight around him, but nothing listened.

 

***

" _STOP IT!_ "

Slayer reflexes had Buffy to the bed, pinning Dean to the mattress almost  _before_  he began to thrash, almost before the echoes of his agonized scream faded. Willow dived for the sedatives she'd put in the nightstand drawer; she'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, hoped that the memories would assimilate peacefully....

Jabbing the needle into his arm woke him a bit. For the first time since he'd passed out yesterday morning, he seemed conscious of his surroundings; he relaxed and quit fighting. Buffy released him, but did not back away, in case he lost control again. "Sammy," he whispered. "Want...Sammy...."

"Do it quick," Buffy ordered, but Willow was already halfway to the door.

Sam barrelled through just as she opened it, nearly colliding with her. "What is it?" he demanded. "What's—" Willow stepped out of his way. "Dean? Oh, God—"

"Sammy." One hand grabbed a handful of Sam's shirt and dragged him so close that Sam had to kneel on the floor. "Promise me—no matter what—you'll get the thing that killed Mom."

"Dean, you're not going to die—"

" _Promish me!_ " His speech was starting to slur as the drugs took effect.

"I promise," Sam said helplessly, "but  _nothing_  is going to happen, Dean—" The drugs chose that moment to kick in all the way, and Dean fell back into his pillow, eyes closed. His death-grip on the shirt loosened so abruptly that Sam lost his balance. " _Dean?_ "

Buffy put a hand on his shoulder; it was enough to restrain him. "We had to drug him. He might have hurt himself."

"Thank God," he breathed. "I mean—not that—"

She grinned. "You definitely inherited your way with words from the human side of the family." She pulled the blankets back up over Dean and laid her hand on his forehead. "Will, he's awfully warm."

"Fever?" Sam jumped up. "He's got a fever?"

"Calm down, it might not be anything. Right, Will?" Willow hesitated. " _Right?_ "

"I don't know," Willow said helplessly. "I don't know."

" _Will!_ "

"It—there's two ways for something like this to go. Either it goes peacefully, and that only takes a day or two, or—or it doesn't. Fever—" Willow took a deep breath. "Fever means it doesn't."

Sam stared at her. "Fuck this," he said finally, "I'm taking him to a hospital! You don't even know what you're doing!"

"A hospital can't handle it either, Sam!" Willow snapped. "They'll decide he's having a psychotic break, stuff him full of drugs, and when those  _don't_  work, they'll have him permanently committed to the nearest state facility! Is that what you want?"

"No, of course not," Sam said, defeated. "But—"

"There are things we  _can_  do," Willow said. "I'm calling the doctor."

"I thought you just said—"

"Not  _that_  kind of doctor, Sam," Buffy said quietly. "This one is— He's different."


	18. Chapter 18

The Doctor turned out to be a short little guy with seven fingers to a hand, purple eyes, orange horns, and possibly a tail. He jabbered to himself in a language Sam could barely hear, let alone understand, as he examined Dean. Periodically, red light flickered between his fingers.

Magic, of course, because what Dean needed right now was  _more_  magic.

Finally he finished with Dean and turned to where Willow, Sam, and Buffy were waiting. The creepy little—guy—tilted his head and studied Sam a moment. "Precognitor."

"What?"

"Visions," Willow explained. "He means you have visions of the future."

He'd always imagined that it would be nice to meet someone who took the visions as matter-of-factly as they might, say, his hair color. It wasn't. For some reason, Willow and Buffy's lack of reaction to the revelation made him feel  _worse_. "Oh. That. Yeah, sometimes."

"Vision make come here?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me."

"What's that got to do with Dean being sick?"

"Mebbe nothing. Mebbe all."

Sam looked at Willow; she nodded. "I saw a woman on a plane, with a kid. Dean. I thought it was him and Mom."

"This bring?" The Doctor sounded skeptical. Sam couldn't blame him.

"I woke up knowing that we had to come here. I tried to remember what made me think that, but I never could. It was just a feeling that I had to come here."

"Wake peaceful? Slow?"

"No." Sam shook his head. "Nightmare. Dean threw a pillow at me to wake me up, said I was screaming in my sleep."

"Scream what?"

"Something about Mom. I don't think he heard it clearly, either, since I woke him up. I didn't go back to sleep, I just stayed awake and tried to remember, and the longer I thought about it, the more I could feel something pulling me here."

The Doctor made a series of choked-off noises that must have meant something in its native tongue. "No good," he said finally.

"What?" He fought down panic. "What's no good?"

"Vision not for you. Vision for him." He pointed a skinny green-nailed finger at Dean. "Sense breaking."

"I don't understand."

"This one—" The Doctor pointed at Dean again. "Block start fail before here. You sense. Bring here."

"Block?" Sam didn't know what was confusing him more, the Doctor's odd speech patterns or not knowing what the hell they were talking about.

" _Before_  they got here?" Willow asked. "Oh, shit. That means—"

" _Mek-ak._  No. Many reason block fail."

"Why is that making Dean sick?" Sam interrupted. "It's just a spell!"

"No. Memory in brain. Was block. Block fail. Let memory go. Now adjust. Take time."

"How long?"

The Doctor shrugged. "No tell. Mebbe short, mebbe long. Extra magic. Man-brain only handle so much. Extra bad. No go anywhere. Make fever. Mebbe damage."

"I don't—" Sam began.

"Like storm. Storm in brain. Magic like lightning. Strike wrong, all go bzzt. Mebbe die. Magic hit body. Damage."

Sam had completely lost any grasp on what the Doctor was trying to say. "Is there  _any_  chance of me getting this in English?"

Willow took pity on him. "The body has natural mechanisms to—to ground magic, like you would an electrical current. If there's too much magic for the body to handle, things can go wrong. Brain damage, usually, but it can damage other systems too. That's why he has a fever. His body's overloaded."

"Because of a  _memory?_ "

"No, because the spell failed. Spells like that, when they collapse, release a lot of power."

"Two people now," the Doctor put in. "Must make one. Take time."

"Huh?"

Willow jumped in again. "Once he's past the overload, the memories have to integrate. The memories that I blocked have to find a way to mesh with Dean's memories, both the ones from your life with your dad and the ones I made for him. If they don't, he—he could split. Two personalities. Or worse."

" _Worse?_  How in hell can it—"

"He could go insane." The Doctor made a clicking sound. "Buffy, can you—" Buffy nodded. Willow took Sam by the arm and led him out of Dean's room. "She'll settle things with the Doctor, see if there's anything he can advise. And you— I'm sorry, Sam, but you have to stay away from him."

It took a few seconds for her words to sink in. "Like hell!" he shouted. "I'm not going to abandon him just because you say so!"

"Chances are he's going to be delirious, talking about things from  _both_  lives. We can't take the risk of anything he says cracking  _your_  blocks."

"You don't even know what brought his down! How can you—"

"We can't take the chance."

Anger. Helplessness. Fear. "This is all your fault," he snarled, lashing out at her because there was nowhere else to aim the rage. "If you'd  _erased_  the memories instead of just  _blocking_  them—"

" _Erase_  and  _block_  are interchangeable terms," Willow explained, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. "Really, truly erasing memories, so that they're utterly  _gone_ , takes a huge amount of power and focus, and if you're trying to get rid of anything but one specific memory, it's impossible to control. Blocking serves the same purpose, really, it's much easier to control, and a good block is just as permanent and poses no risks."

"Unless it cracks!"

"It's hard for anybody who's not the casting witch to crack a good block. For them to come tumbling down all by themselves.... It's happened a handful of times in recorded history. And you two had the best blocks a week of spellcasting could make. Sam, you were my best friend's sons. I promised her you'd be safe. Making sure you  _never_  remembered who you were was the only way to do that."

"And Dean?" he shot back. "Is he safe?"

"I don't know. Maybe something you guys did exposed him to enough magic to erode them, and then seeing Buffy was too much—" She stopped, regarding him thoughtfully. "Death."

The single word froze the anger. "What?"

"Blocks don't survive death. They're linked to the body, so when that shuts down, they shut down. If hunters are as reckless as Slayers—and if you're  _anything_  like your mother—you've had plenty of close calls. Has he ever been brought back from the brink of death?"

Sam flinched away from the memories. It took everything he had to keep his voice from shaking. "We had a run-in with a demon. We got away, but it possessed a truck driver, rammed our car. Dean was hurt bad— _before_  the wreck, the demon hurt him, but anyway.... Dad—" His voice cracked. "Dad made a deal with the demon. His life for Dean's."

"You're sure Dean was that close to dying?"

"There was a reaper there for him," he said, wishing she'd quit making him relive that day. "He'd had to be resuscitated once already."

"That must be it.  _Damn!_ " He stepped back, startled by the display of temper. " _That_  weakened the blocks. They've been eroding ever since. And then you two came here, and met us, and that triggered the collapse."

"And now his brain is short-circuiting." God, it was all happening again; Dean was going to die and there was nothing he could do— "Put them back," he said finally, choking the words out. "Block the memories again. If he can't remember—"

"Sam, I can't." She sounded genuinely sorry. Sounded like  _she_  was fighting back emotions as strong as his own. "The first time, I wasn't being picky, I was blocking  _everything_. Down to your very  _identity_. Trying to pick and choose, to figure out which memory is Dean's and which is—is Buffy's son, it would be impossible."

"But—"

" _And_  that's assuming the storm in his head would even allow me to magic him." Willow gave him a moment to let that sink in. "We'll do everything we can, Sam, I promise. Everything to make this as easy on both of you as it can be."


	19. Chapter 19

The door to Dean's room opened; Buffy escorted the Doctor to the front door, then returned. "No advice on what  _we_  can do," Buffy reported, sounding a bit frustrated, "but he was generous enough to suggest we call Corinna."

"I'll do that now," Willow said quietly. Sam glanced over in time to see the look she exchanged with Buffy; they spoke volumes to each other in that look, volumes he couldn't translate. Willow disappeared into the kitchen.

"Corinna?" Sam asked.

"Long-term care nurse. Specializes in magical illnesses."

"Long-term?" he repeated. "How long?"

"We don't know, Sam. There's no way to tell." She paused—weighing her words? "The Doctor said it would be weeks. Maybe months."

"Months?" he repeated blankly. "But—that— Oh, God. This is all my fault," he said, sinking onto the couch. "I never should have—"

"Sam, you came here for a reason."

"The blocks wouldn't have collapsed if we hadn't come here! If I hadn't  _made_  him—"

"Sam." She sat down beside him. "The blocks were  _already_  going. What would've happened if they'd collapsed while you were off on your own? How would you have taken care of him?"

"I would've—"

"No. I know you hunters pride yourself on self-reliance, but this isn't something that can be fixed with a splash of holy water and some Latin. You came here to save Dean. That's why you had the vision. You  _have_  to believe that."

Believe. She made it sound so easy. "He's all I've got," Sam choked out. "I can't lose—"

"You won't."

"Then why can't I see him? Why can't I help?"

"Because you can't know which twin you are."

"We're  _not_ —"

Buffy raised an eyebrow. "The  _twin_  thing is what trips you up?"

"We're not much alike."

"You never were." Buffy smiled, a soft little smile of memory. Dad had smiled that way, on those rare occasions when he could talk about Mom, about life before the demon. "You were twins. You weren't identical."

He smiled at that—and then the implications of those words hit him, hard. He had assumed that  _twin_  meant  _identical_ , that the differences between him and Dean were some other side-effect of Willow's spells, like the age difference. If they weren't.... "You know, don't you?" he asked. "You know which of us is which."

"No."

"You're lying," he spat.

"I couldn't tell you if we did, Sam! It's too dangerous!"

"But—  _Why_  can't I know? What could it hurt?"

Buffy glanced toward the kitchen—looking for Willow? "This is why." She pulled up her shirt, baring her stomach. A jagged scar cut across it—a knife wound, he thought, still a dark purple though it looked fully healed. The skin surrounding it had the blistered, melted look of burn scars—all across her abdomen, vanishing under the shirt and into her pants. Oddly, they were pale, made even more so by the dark gash of the knife wound. "This is what Alex did to me. With his powers  _restrained_. This was as far as Ellie could fix it."

"My God," he whispered. His eyes stung suddenly; he blinked back the tears. "If it was me that did that, I'm sorry,  _so_  sorry—"

She let the shirt fall back down. "Oh, Sam, you're not understanding me." She stroked his hair, a maternal gesture that was damned weird coming from someone his own age. " _You_  didn't do this. Neither did Dean.  _Alex_  did. Willow's just not sure she can bind Alex again. Not without seriously damaging—whichever. And he would  _have_  to be bound. Or destroyed. He was a  _child_  when he did this. As an adult, he could destroy—everything."

"And if—if he's Dean? If Dean's him?"

"We'll handle that when we know for sure."

"What will you—"

"Don't worry about that now."

"He's my brother!"

"You think I don't  _know_  that?" Buffy retorted. "Which one of us had six months of you two beating the crap out of my insides?"

He looked up at her, startled. " _Six_  months?"

"Have I  _mentioned_  that you weren't exactly normal?" That came with a devious little smile that for some reason reminded him of Dean. "And my God, but you two didn't stop fighting each other over who had which side of me until after you were born." She sighed. "Then you  _still_  fought. Giles found this antique cradle big enough for quintuplets, and we still had to go buy another one because you two just kept kicking and clawing at each other."

"It couldn't have been that bad."

"You both had black eyes before you were two weeks old," she retorted. "If you'd had a doctor, he would've reported me for child abuse." He forced a smile at that. "C'mon."

"Where?"

"We both need to take our minds off things. I have an idea." She reached for his hands and tugged him up off the couch. "Come on."

Buffy led him down to the second floor, through the library, past a line of cabinets, and into a gym. "Training room," she answered his incredulous look. "Natural ability only takes you so far, even for a Slayer. Ready?"

"Ready for what?"

She smiled wickedly, and he had the sudden, rather disconcerting thought that she must go through men like wildfire. "I want to see how well you fight. Attack me."

" _What?_ " That came out as a screech.

"You think I'm going to let my boys wander around taking on the dead and demonic without knowing how well you can handle it? Don't let the age fool you, Sam, I'm still your mother. Attack me."

"But—" He stammered, looking for a reason that didn't boil down to  _only hit demon girls_. "I might hurt you—"

"I very much doubt that. Do you even know  _how_  to attack someone?"

 _That_  stung. "But—Buffy—this—I— I could  _hurt_  you!"

"You know, I had this boyfriend once," she said, rather randomly. "He was in the military. Elite demon-fighting group. We were sparring one day and he told me not to hold back anymore. Know what happened?" She didn't give him a chance to answer. "I kicked him across the room."

"Christ."

"Wanna know the bad part?"

 _Not really._  "He died?"

"I held back." After a couple of heartbeats, she reached over and gently shut his gaping jaw. "Now. Let's see just how out-of-shape you are."


	20. Chapter 20

"Tsk," Buffy said, grinning down at him. "You never learned that move? That's one of the classics!"

Sam stared up at the ceiling, doing a quick catalogue of things that were going to hurt in the morning. A few small muscle groups might have escaped pummeling. Not many. Very small. "I  _thought_  I did—"

"Looks like I'm going to have to put you both through more training. A  _lot_  more training. I've seen better twelve-year-olds."

"If they were Slayers, they had an advantage." He gratefully accepted her extended hand, not entirely sure he could get up by himself. She'd promised to take it easy on him, and the sad part was, he was reasonably sure that—by her standards—she  _had_. He wasn't bleeding, but most of the major joints seriously hurt, and his ass was going to be black and blue by morning.

She, on the other hand, barely had a hair out of place, hadn't even worked up a sweat, and was bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet.

"Are all Slayers like this?" he asked, rubbing his aching shoulder.

"Yep. But I do have an advantage—I've been doing this for over a decade."

"How old—"

"Fifteen." Her face became momentarily serious. "You never had a normal life, Sam, I know that. But—you may have had it easier than I did. One day I was a shallow little girl in L.A., the next day, the fate of the world depended on me. I had  _normal_  wrenched away from me."

"I—" The familiar rush of pain and memories made him flinch; it took him a second to find control of his voice again. "I had normal for awhile. In college. With Jess."

"Jess?" she asked quietly. He knew that expression on anybody: sympathy. "Didn't end well?"

"The demon that killed Mom. It—it came after Jess too. That—" He sighed. "That's what got me back out here with Dean, hunting things. One minute I was going to law school, the next I'm back to everything I tried to run away from."

"Running away really should work, shouldn't it?" she asked. She sounded like she understood, in a way Dean never really had. "It's mean, the way it holds out hope for you."

"Like you—"

"I wasn't always the gung-ho Slayer I am now. I—well, let's just say I used to really resent this whole destiny thing. I tried to run away, once. After—hm, let's not go into that. Anyhow. Wound up right back where I started from, with ten times the mess. But," she added brightly, "I did get some useful experience waiting tables."

There was nothing much he could say to that. What had running away gotten him, other than a pre-law degree, a dead girlfriend, and library know-how? He decided to change the subject. "So,  _Mom_ —" She laughed. "How bad am I? Tell me the truth."

She shrugged. "Decent, for a civilian. Sloppy, though."

Sam made a mental note to make sure she didn't spar with Dean, because Dean would take that casual "sloppy" as an insult to the Winchester family honor. "Dad raised us to shoot first," he said, attempting to explain.

She shook her head. "I don't think it would ever have occurred to me to  _shoot_  the things. Especially not to spend my off hours stuffing shotgun shells with—what was it? Rock salt and silver?"

"Silver? Only for werewolves and shapeshifters."

"Whatever." He swallowed a grin; she would have driven Dad insane with that lack of attention to detail. "Council's always been traditional. Until Giles and Willow started taking over, if it had been introduced in the last hundred years? Forget about it. Not much for modern ways. This one woman came over here and tried to tell Giles he was 'too American' once. We thought she was joking, he was such a dork. And with us, the Slayers I mean, it just seems ridiculous to work with distance weapons when we were pretty much  _made_  for hand-to-hand combat. Bows, sometimes, but that's because wooden arrows work just as well as stakes. Tranquilizer guns are about as close as we get, and that's only if you  _like_  the person the werewolf is— Sam, things are going to fly in if you let your mouth hang open like that."

" _Like_  a  _werewolf?_  How can you—"

"Oz was a very nice guy the rest of the month," she said, a bit defensively.

"Let me guess. There's two kinds of werewolves too."

"I don't pretend to know all the kinds of demonic things out there," she said flatly. "There's so many layers in the demonic hierarchy— Hell, when we went to Europe,  _everything_  was different. But they all know about Slayers. And a lot of them work very hard to avoid us."

" _Katarr_ ," he said softly, remembering.

"Among others. That's why we have Watchers, to do the bookwork."

He gave her a look. "Does Willow know you talk about her that way?"

She laughed. "Will said it first. She's a little possessive about that library, now that it's all hers and she doesn't have to answer to Giles about organizing it. I'm starving. You?"

He blinked. "What?"

"Food. As in, I feel the need for some." She stood on tiptoe and squinted at him. "I didn't hit you that hard, did I? I don't remember your head going thunk."

"I'm fine. Conversation just got away from me."

She grinned. "Sorry. Keep forgetting you're new to the wonder that is Slayer-speak. Everybody gets thrown the first couple of weeks."

"Good to know."

"By the time Dean wakes up, you'll be fluent, and you can make fun of him for not knowing what you're saying."

"But I do that anyway."

She gave him a look—and then burst into laughter. "Come on," she finally managed, wiping tears out of her eyes. "We'll go upstairs, get cleaned up, get something to eat, and if he's not talking in his sleep, I'll let you in Dean's room for a few minutes. Sound good?"

"But—"

"I won't tell Will if you don't."

Her conspiratorial grin was infectious. "Sounds good."


	21. Chapter 21

Buffy was as good as her word; she manufactured a reason for Willow to go downstairs, then let Sam into Dean's room. She didn't leave—that was probably too much to ask, really, under the circumstances—but she didn't hover.

"It might be awhile before I'm back in here, Dean," Sam said, feeling a little stupid, but at the same time praying that Dean somehow heard him, that his brother didn't think he'd abandoned him. "Buffy and Willow say I have to stay out. I don't want to. But they say it'll be better for you. Both of us." Dean's eyes opened, but Sam could tell Dean didn't see him—at least, not the  _him_  of here and now. "Dean?" he asked softly, just in case.

Dean's hand clamped down on his, hard. "It's okay, Sammy," he said. He sounded about twenty years younger.

"He keeps saying that," Buffy said.

"He's said it a lot." Every bad dream, every illness, every hospital visit, every fight that ended with Sam hiding from their father so he could cry without sparking another fight, those words had been said sooner or later. Dean probably said it more often than he said  _son of a bitch_.

The cat raised its head—and then it was on its feet, arching its back and spitting at Sam. He froze.

"Priss," Buffy said warningly.

But Priss was a cat, not a dog, and there probably wasn't anything either one of them could have done to prevent the cat from leaping at Sam, howling like—well, like an angry cat, claws fully extended. He managed to get his arm up in time to keep the cat from landing on his face. " _Shit!_ " he yelled as the claws sank into his arm.

" _Priss!_ " Buffy grabbed the cat and wrenched it away, trying not to hurt either one of them. One claw stuck in Sam's arm, just for a few minutes before Buffy pulled the cat away with enough force to make the skin tear. "God, Sam, are you—"

"Fine," he answered through clenched teeth.

"Uh-huh." She gave the cat a gentle toss; it immediately hopped back on the bed and stood on Dean's chest, hissing at Sam, daring him to come closer. "I don't think Priss wants you in here."

"I'm getting kicked out by the  _cat?_ "

"She's more dangerous to me than you are."

" _Hey!_ "

"Besides, you need to tend to those scratches." Priss hissed at them again. "Come on. I'll show you where the first-aid kit is."

***

Corinna arrived that evening, an older, no-nonsense woman who radiated an aura of "career nurse"—except for her hair, which was an electric blue that Sam wasn't sure  _could_  be obtained from hair dye. She didn't speak to Sam, just looked him over, her eyes lingering a moment on the rough bandage on his arm, and seemed to dismiss him. Never asked him a single question about Dean, and before he could confront her about that, she and Buffy had disappeared into Dean's room so she could "meet" her new patient.

"That's okay," Sam growled at the door that had just shut in his face, "I'm just his  _brother_. No need to involve me in this. Never mind that I've known him all his life and you met him a few  _days_  ago. Hey! Nurse!" he shouted. "You wanna know about his allergies?"

Buffy stuck her head out the door. "Sulfa drugs? You too, by the way."

Sam refused to take the bait. Refused to accept that she actually  _knew_  that. It was a common allergy, anyway. "Betadine," he said flatly.

"Really? We never—"

"You've never been with him through surgery." Of course, they'd only found out by accident themselves; it was  _supposed_  to be minor surgery—a broken bone? appendicitis? Sam couldn't remember  _which_  surgery it had been, only that he'd been fairly young—but they'd used betadine as part of the prep and Dean had nearly died.

"True enough. Thanks." She closed the door. Again.

Sam swore under his breath—and then it hit him, really hit him, how very  _lucky_  they'd both been. Wandering around the country, giving hospitals and clinics and ERs fake names and fake credit cards.... There was exactly one person in the world left who knew enough about Sam's medical history to keep some well-meaning paramedic from accidentally killing him. The same held true for Dean.

Dad had kept files for them, he thought—he remembered two thick envelopes that had always accompanied them on any trip to the hospital—but those were long gone. He'd found that out the hard way, when Stanford wanted his immunization records. It had turned out to be easier just to go down to the health department and get re-immunized.

What if there was something about Dean's health he was forgetting? Hell, he'd been away from Dad and Dean for four years, what if there was something he didn't  _know?_  Dean could be missing a kidney for all he knew. Okay, he  _probably_  wasn't, but there were a thousand other things that could have happened.

"Write it down."

He jerked around. Willow was standing there, watching him. "What?"

"Your medical histories. Start writing them down." She patted his arm reassuringly. "If there's one thing I've learned from working with Slayers, it's that a copy of your medical information is always useful. It might help you remember something, too, if you  _have_  forgotten it. The paper and stuff's in the cabinet under the TV."

"You keep writing materials under the TV?"

"I get a lot of inspiration for new spellwork when I'm watching  _Survivor_."

He stared at her. " _You_  watch  _Survivor?_ "

"Hey, we've all got our vices. One little reality show compared to some of the other stuff out there? I'll take the reality show."

He smiled at that, though it was half against his will. She had a certain point, he supposed. "Willow—"

"Yeah?"

"Buffy said—" He stopped, not quite sure how to word this. "She said we—I mean, the twins—that they fought a lot."

Willow smiled. "That would be putting it mildly. You— Well, let's just say I'm glad to see that you and Dean get along. I wasn't sure the blocks would fix that. Not that I told your dad that part."

"How—" Sam faltered again. "Did we ever—"

"Hurt each other?" she finished, and he nodded. "A few times. Bruises, mostly. Until—until the end. And then—um—Alex tried to kill Liam." She sighed. "We tried, Sam. But after that, it was just a matter of time before we either had to hide you or kill you. And Buffy just couldn't take the thought of killing you."

"And you?"

She gave him a long, level look. " _I_  wasn't about to risk the stability of the Primary. No matter what the Council said."

***

Buffy finally emerged from Dean's room—alone, without the nurse. She sat down beside Sam and absently read over one of the scribbled pages. "Good idea," she said, "we never got a chance to diagnose that much with you. You never really got that si— _shit!_  How many bones has Dean broken?"

"Most of them," Sam said absently. "Those are just the ones I remember."

"You guys must heal like Slayers. Anybody else would be a mass of scars by now."

"Maybe we inherited it," he replied. She smacked him on the back of the head. "Ow."

"Smartass."

"Trained by the best."

"Dean or your dad?"

"Dean."

"You know, somehow, I'm not surprised." A quick flash of a grin told him she was teasing.

"Is everything settled with the nurse?"

"Boy, you got the hang of topic changes quick," she said dryly. "And yeah, everything's settled. Corinna's going to be here during the day—nine to six. Me and Willow and some of the older girls'll cover the nights. She doesn't want him left alone."

"I'll—"

"Sam, you  _can't_."

"You can't keep me away from him!"

"I most certainly  _can_ ," she replied levelly. "Would you like me to prove it?"

Sam shoved himself away from the couch. "Dammit, Buffy—"

"Sam, we can't let you in there! I can let you interview everybody if it makes you feel better, but you have to  _stay out!_ "

"I'm his  _family!_  I don't care what you claim, I'm his—"

"And there are things brothers shouldn't have to do!" she snapped. "Do you know what Corinna is doing to Dean right now, Sam? She's putting in a feeding tube and a catheter, and she wouldn't do that much with  _me_  in the room! How do you think she'll treat  _you?_ "

"But—"

"Dean is  _unconscious_. He needs intense care that none of us can provide—"

"Then you're not any more qualified to sit in there with him than I am!"

"No, I'm not," she admitted. "But you know what else I'm not? A half-demon with a memory-block."

Was she  _trying_  to piss him off? "You don't  _know_  that! We might not even  _be_  your—"

"Oh, you might be some other kids that were given to John Winchester the demon hunter to raise?" she asked acidly. "Another pair of boys with memory-blocks? Wow. I had no idea that Winchester was that much of a bleeding heart. What's the names of your other brothers?"

He couldn't answer that, and she knew it.

"For  _everybody's_  sake, Sam,  _including_  you and Dean, give us the benefit of the doubt. At least until we know for sure, one way or the other. Okay?"

"He needs me."

"I know." Her voice was soft, and for a second, Sam thought she might understand. "But he'll need you even more when this is over."


	22. Chapter 22

Memory. Such an insignificant thing, until it took over your life.

Memories. Twisting, twining, fighting, contradicting. Tearing apart the fabric of his life, of his  _self_.

One moment he was Dean Winchester, growing up too quickly, raising his little brother, shooting at bottles for the rare reward of his father's smile. Then he was Liam Summers, a child grown too fast for entirely different reasons, playing games with Willow's rune-stones and building forts out of heavy books with no pictures but woodcuts.

Dean's father taught him how to shoot, how to hunt, all the weaknesses of the things that went bump in the night.

Liam had no father. Giles owned the place where they lived, a man who talked like the people on TV but not like Mommy and Willow. He was tall and gray-haired and everybody listened to him, and he always said he never had time to play but he never argued if Liam crawled in between him and a book, and when Liam wouldn't settle down for a nap he'd curl up in Giles' room and Giles would play old records until Liam finally dozed off.

Dean learned how to drive, how to con and hustle, how to shoot spirits with rock salt and burn the bones to send them on. There was no other life but the hunt, to find what had killed his mother, to take vengeance on it, and in the meantime kill every demon and save every human he could. All while taking care of Sammy.

Liam knew seven alphabets by the time he was four—months, not years, because he was different from other children, different from everyone but Alex—and when he hid, it was in the library, with a massive old book on the floor and Priss curled up in his arms or on his back or in his lap.

Dean didn't have time to pleasure-read. He had to raise his brother and help his father. He knew what he knew, common-sense knowledge pieced together from folklore and horror movies and the two hardest teachers ever: experience and John Winchester.

Liam.

Dean.

_Fire and fists, hatred blazing gold in his twin's eyes—_

_Invisible claws raking him from the inside out while the thing that possessed his father's body taunted him with eyes that glittered golden—_

_LiamDeanLiamDeanLiamDean—_

Neither.

Both.

Everything was wrong.

Everything was  _breaking_.

 

***

Sam came out of bed with a yell of his own, startled awake by the crazed bellow that echoed through the apartment, even through walls and closed doors. He was across the room and out the door before his conscious mind had caught up with his reflexes. Dean. Dean was yelling.

"What's wrong?" he demanded, charging into Dean's room. "What—  _Shit!_ "

Buffy was attempting to pin Dean to the bed. Dean was screaming and fighting, but it was obvious that he didn't even  _see_  her, that whatever he was fighting was not in the room here with them. Willow was there too, fumbling for something in the nightstand and dodging the occasional stray fist.

Sam started forward, thinking to help, but Willow jerked her hand up and he slammed into an invisible wall. "Get  _out_  of here!" Willow ordered.

"No!"

"Dammit, Sam—"

"Will!"

Willow jerked her attention back to Dean. "Shit!" The thing in her hand was a syringe, and she scrabbled in the nightstand drawer until she came up with a vial of liquid to jab the needle into. Drugs.

"He doesn't need drugs!" Sam shouted.

"You got a better idea to calm him down?" Willow shot back. She got hold of Dean's arm without getting an eye blacked—the way Dean was thrashing, that was a miracle—and managed to stick him with the needle.

"Sam,  _out!_ " Buffy yelled.

"No!"

" _SAMMY!_ " Dean screamed, and Sam threw himself against the invisible wall, in a desperate hope that sheer force could overcome magic.

"Will—" Buffy said, sounding a bit panicked, as Dean continued to fight her.

"It'll take a minute, it's got to get into his system—"

Dean's thrashing began to slow. "No," he murmured, "Sammy...don't.... Don't go, Sammy, y' don't havta...."

"I'm not going anywhere!"

"He's not talking to you," Willow said, not looking at him.

"There we go," Buffy said softly, "back to sleep.... There." She slowly eased away from the bed. Dean had slipped back into unconsciousness, not even whispering. "Good. That's one taken care of." She turned to Sam, and she was  _not_  happy. "As for you—"

"Buffy," Willow warned.

"What the hell is going on?" Sam demanded.

"I told you to stay out of here!"

"If you think I'm going to leave him alone when God knows what—"

"He's  _delirious!_ "

" _Buffy!_ " Willow held up her hand, and Buffy froze. "Both of you,  _shut up_. Now. Neither one of you is helping Dean and I won't hesitate to kick you  _both_  out! Is that clear?" Buffy gave her a sullen glare, but nodded. Finally Sam did too. "Good. Sam, go back to bed."

"Not until—"

"He's fine. The drugs will buy him a little peace. It's the best we can do for him right now."

Sam looked through the open door at his brother. One of Dean's hands clenched the top quilt; he looked anything but peaceful. "Is it going to be like this the whole time?"

Willow sighed. "Honestly? It'll probably get a lot worse." She patted him on the arm. "You'll need your strength for that, Sam. Go get some sleep."

Sam glanced from Willow to Buffy, and realized he stood no chance. "Fine," he said, defeated, and headed back to his room. He had to remake the bed; he'd left the covers trailing behind him when he took that flying leap toward the door.

He crawled back into bed, turned the light out, and stared at the ceiling, where some enterprising soul had put glow-in-the-dark stars and planets.

_Don't go. Sammy, you don't have to go, it's just a stupid fight, give him another chance._

He lay there the entire night, never sleeping, suffering through a constant replay of his own memories.


	23. Chapter 23

Three days after the Doctor left, Buffy finally remembered why she didn't like having him in the house. Doc didn't quite approve of Willow as Watcher—she wasn't old or stuffy enough for his standards—and considered it his sworn duty to notify Giles of any odd goings-on. Buffy was just surprised it had taken Giles this long to call. Maybe he'd lost his time-zone map again.

"Do you think he's dangerous?"

Buffy, draped over Willow's desk chair, studied the ceiling intently, considering answers that would  _not_  make Giles lunge through thousands of miles of trans-Atlantic phone cables. She really should have Willow find some nice artwork for it; every time she came in here to talk to Giles, she wound up staring at the damned ceiling. "No sign of Alex. Not a glimmer. Willow says the blocks on him are holding up fine. Better than fine, even; she did some testing and she thinks his have gotten  _stronger_  over the years. Apparently Dean's the one with the death-wish and Sam just gets hit on the head, kinda like—"

" _Buffy_."

"Dangerous? Not to us. Not unless we hurt Dean." She sighed. "Sam's smart. Incredibly loyal to Dean. Not so great with the hand-to-hand, but these hunters they hang around with rely on guns and it makes them sloppy. Strong, though. Good fighter. Absolutely committed to hunting down the demon that killed Mary Winchester."

"Loyalty to his fath—his adoptive father's memory."

Buffy allowed herself a grim smile. "It also killed his girlfriend."

"Vengeance, then."

"Maybe. Or because he  _knows_  how those left behind feel. He's more open than Dean, but you still have to pry to get things out of him. Reminds me of a certain Watcher I used to know." Giles snorted. "And he has visions."

" _What?_ "

She winced. Three thousand miles and ten years, and the man could still make her flinch like a little girl. "Sam has visions."

"Prophetic?"

"No, the other kind." He made a noise. "I think your sarcasm batteries need a recharge, Giles."

"Perhaps I shall vacation in Cleveland, then," he said dryly, and she couldn't quite keep back a whimper. "True visions, or just dreams and déjà vu?"

"Both, I think. Sometimes it's nightmares, and sometimes the future smacks him around while he's awake. Those tend to come with pain."

"How much?"

"Somewhere between 'overwhelming' and 'incapacitating.'" There was another noise; she undraped herself in a heartbeat and glared at the speakerphone. "What?"

"Nothing—"

"Ten years and you think I don't know your 'we're in deep shit now' noise?"

"I'll have to do some research to be sure—"

"I'm shocked and appalled."

"But what it comes down to is who—which parent this power came from. Or if it's unique to him."

"Giles—" Her mouth had gone dry. "Slayers don't pass on their powers. Not like that."

"We don't know that for sure. Slayers may very well pass on something of the  _potential_  genetically. But with only one Slayer at a time, and full power bouncing randomly about the globe, no pattern would have been discerned. So few Slayers have borne children, either before or after they were called, that there's very little data."

"Giles, you're being British again."

There was an audible sigh. "There are three possibilities. One. He inherited the visions from you. Two. The visions are a power unique to him, some mutation or random psychic gift. Three. They're part of the demonic core that made Alex."

"I was afraid you were going to say that."

"It's only a possibility."

"It was 'only a possibility' that Liam would go evil." She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. "That was enough for you to want to kill him."

"I didn't  _want_  to, Buffy. I loved him too."

"People generally aren't eager to kill the ones they love."

"I thought it was for the best," he said quietly. "I will not beg your forgiveness for wanting to do what was best for you and the world."

"Good, because you're not getting it!"

Tense, thick silence. This was why Willow handled the necessary conversations with Giles these days. Every time Buffy talked to him, they wound up here, in the middle of the same argument they'd had two years ago. She should let it go. She really should. Especially now that she had them back.

Not today. "Sam's good," she said firmly. "He's a good man. I know he is."

"Buffy—"

"It's not wishful thinking! He doesn't deserve—"

"Neither did Dawn," he said gently, "and neither did Anya. You know as well as I that sometimes sacrifices must be made."

"I know." She leaned back in the chair, regarding the ceiling again. She would  _not_  think of the Key; that still ached, as if Dawn had actually  _been_  her sister, and she had quite enough hurt on her plate with the boys.

"Should I send someone to assist you?"

"Giles, there are a hundred Slayers in the greater Cleveland area, twenty Watchers, another forty Watchers-in-training, and there hasn't been a  _whisper_  of an apocalypse in months. We can handle it."

"I know you  _can_. I'm not convinced that you  _will_."

"Be glad there's an ocean between us." She heard the edge in her voice, and could only hope that he did as well.

Apparently Giles' good sense was engaged today. "I'll get started on that research. And send you a list of possible actions that we can take. You— You two are taking precautions, aren't you?"

"We've locked the poor boy out of his brother's room so he can't hear anything Dean might say. He's not taking it particularly  _well_ , but..."

"Do what you must."

"I always do."

He made a noise that, while not  _precisely_  a negative, was definitely  _not_  an agreement. "Tell Willow I'll expect her usual call on Saturday."

"Sure." She slapped the disconnect, and let her head fall to the table. She knew what the top of that list was going to be: kill Sam in his sleep. Never mind that if anybody was fool enough to do that, when Dean finally  _did_  wake up, he'd slaughter a few dozen Slayers, some Watchers, and maybe go to England to bomb the Council for the hell of it. They'd been able to keep Sam from tearing the place down only because he actually  _listened_  to reason. He was  _still_  bouncing off the walls with worry.

Buffy felt herself smile grimly. Liam had always listened to reason; even before he could toddle, you could sit him down, explain to him why things had to be a certain way, and he'd listen and nod and—providing he didn't have a well-thought-out argument—behave. Alex was the one who'd never listened. Somehow Winchester had taken those inborn qualities and reversed them.

_Be nice. It_ could _have been the spells._

Sure. And snow would fall in L.A. In  _July_.

She shut down the phone system, because Willow got really cranky when it was left on, and opened the door, only to find Sam standing there, arms crossed, looking like he'd been there awhile. "Does he still want to kill us?" he asked flatly.

Had he been eavesdropping? "Giles is willing to wait and see." She wanted to tell him about the research, that Giles—the best book-person on the planet—was looking into the visions, but what if that was the final piece he needed to realize who he had been? "It depends on what happens with Dean."

Sam's expression hardened. "I won't let you kill him."

_If you two put half the effort into worrying about other people as you do into worrying about each other..._  "I hope we don't—"

"No. There's no way in  _hell_  Dean could be this—this— _thing_. He  _kills_  demons, it's his  _life_ , and he's  _good_  at it. It's not  _him_."

"Sam—" She hesitated. "If he's not Alex, are you ready to face the alternative?"


	24. Chapter 24

_Are you ready to face the alternative?_

Buffy's question echoed endlessly in his head, even through his dreams. It fed a nightmare in which Dean forgot him, denied knowing him at all, and then walked away like Sam was  _nothing_  to him. He woke up from that shaking worse than he did after a vision, terrified that he was developing some new psychic ability that had allowed him to stumble into one of  _Dean's_  nightmares—because he knew, even if Dean would never,  _ever_  admit it, that that kind of abandonment was Dean's deepest fear.

There was no sleeping after that. Hell, he'd be lucky if he ever slept again. Sam wrapped the quilt around himself and went into the back den to watch TV, and stared blindly at late-night cartoons.

Dean wasn't Alex. Dean  _couldn't_  be Alex. Nothing about Alex sounded like Dean, not the aggression, not the powers, not the random attacks on his own  _brother_ , for God's sake. Dean was a fighter, sure, but only if he saw a threat—to someone he loved, or to an innocent. He didn't attack people just for the hell of it.

But there was a fifty-fifty chance—

Fuck that. Sam knew Dean better than anybody. The only demons hiding out in Dean were psychological. Dean—Dean was  _normal_ ; at least, as normal as their fucked-up upbringing allowed.

But if Buffy and Willow were right, if he and Dean  _were_  Buffy's children, and if Dean wasn't Alex.... That left only one option.

_Me._

No matter how he tried, he couldn't remember anything that was not clearly  _Sam Winchester_ : firing a gun practically before he could walk, learning to read on scribbled notes about the weaknesses of various supernatural creatures, finally finding escapes from the never-ending drilling in the wonderfully mundane world of school and books...and, eventually, the fighting. The constant fighting.

_Did Dad know? Did he know which was which? Was that why—_

No. Willow was too smart to have told John Winchester which child had exhibited demonic powers and the inclination to use them; she knew, she  _must_  have, that his only answer to  _that_  problem would have involved a bullet. The fighting—that must have been all  _them_ , some quirk of personality that had just made Sam too much like Dad for them to get along. Maybe she'd just tried too hard to make them like  _real_  children would be, copied too much of Dad's personality into the spell that had created them. Their current selves.  _Dean and Sam_ , that was it, as opposed to  _Alex and Liam_.

This whole situation made his head hurt.

Was it because he was younger? No, that he'd  _turned out_  younger; Willow's spells were responsible for the age difference. They were twins, they were the same age—

Wait. He was younger, and he had no memories  _whatsoever_. Dean, on the other hand, apparently still had some of his. That couldn't be coincidence. Sam had required more magic, more erasing—more  _regression_.

Why? There couldn't have been that much difference—

Unless.

Willow and Buffy had been oddly calm throughout this whole mess. He'd thought it was just that they'd had practice keeping their heads in a crisis, but would they have been so calm if they really didn't know which twin was buried in Dean's head? If they for one second thought Alex was going to escape?

No. But they  _were_  panicked when it came to the possibility of  _Sam's_  blocks collapsing. So panicked that they were willing to resort to violence to keep him out of Dean's room, in case one stray word triggered the same kind of massive collapse that seeing Buffy had triggered in Dean.

There was only one explanation for that.

They knew which of them was Alex.

They thought  _Sam_  was Alex.

Had Buffy been trying to break it to him gently? To warn him of the monster trapped somewhere in his head? To tell him to get out before Giles showed up to kill him again? Just because she  _said_  he was going to wait didn't mean he  _would_. Or that she'd told Sam the truth. Giles could be on his way here now for all he knew.

_She wouldn't do that._  Buffy hadn't forgiven Giles yet for his role in forcing her to give up her twins. And she had no doubts that they  _were_  her kids, which made her even more emotionally involved in this. For all that nonsense about the potential dangers, she wasn't thinking clearly.

He rubbed his temples, trying to get rid of the headache that was building behind his eyes. It felt eerily like a vision headache, which was ridiculous since he hadn't had—

The visions.

Alex had  _powers_. Liam didn't.

Sam did. Dean didn't.

Christ, how had he been so  _blind?_  How had he missed  _that?_  The biggest damn clue to their birth identities, staring him in the fucking  _face_  the entire goddamn  _time!_

_I'm Alex. Dear God,_ I'm _Alex. I'm the one who gave Buffy those scars. And I'm the reason they had to send us away. This—_

_This is all_ my _fault._ I _did this._

 

 

***

Buffy came in from patrolling before dawn, and saw the telltale flickering of light from the TV in the back den. She went in there to turn it off only to find Sam asleep on the couch, cocooned in the quilt from his bed.

She had to smile. Poor kid's feet hung off the end of the couch. You'd think he'd've learned to sleep curled up, just to fit, but somehow, he still slept in a sprawl.

_Poor kid._

Oh, God. When had he made the transition from _maybe Alex_  to  _poor kid?_

Maybe Giles was right to worry. The last time there had been a threat to the world that had involved her children—

No. Giles didn't regret his decision, and she wasn't going to regret hers. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

"Sam," she said, giving him a gentle shake. "It's cleaning day, Sam, the girls will be here soon and—"

"Go 'way," he said drowsily, and pulled the quilt over his head.

" _Sam_ ," she said, and this time put a little more strength into shaking him.

"Quit it, Dean," he said, in a drowsy snarl, and swatted at her.

She ducked, and had the sudden amused thought that Dean must have damned good reflexes. She grabbed the edge of the quilt and yanked. Sam went rolling onto the floor—and was on his feet and in a fighting stance in a heartbeat. Then his eyes focused. " _Buffy?_ "

"And you say you don't sleep well." She tossed the quilt back at him. "Go sleep in your bed."

His head must be clearing now, because he gave her a stubborn look, even as he wrapped himself back up in the quilt. She made a note to turn up the thermostat. "I don't want—"

"Then go get dressed, at least. Not that you don't look good in the quilt, but I don't think you want the girls getting an eyeful." He didn't move. "Sam—"

"Am I Alex?" he asked. There was desperation in his voice. "Buffy, please. I have to—"

"Then you'll find out from someone else," she said. "I'm not telling you." There was a flash of cold calculation in his eyes, as if he were piecing together the puzzle from that vague statement. "Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you. It's too much of a risk."

"Don't you want—"

"I want my boys," she interrupted fiercely, "I want  _both_  my boys. Alive and well and whole, and if I have to have you as Sam and Dean instead of Liam and Alex, then that's how it'll be. Do you understand me?"

"No."

"You're not a parent." Sam looked at her blankly. "Could  _you_  kill your own child? Because if anything wakes up Alex—whether he's you or Dean—that's what you're asking me to do. You're asking me to kill my son."

Those dark eyes bored into her. "Dad would. If it was necessary."

"I'm not your father," she snapped to cover her shock at  _that_  little statement. Winchester would have killed them? And Willow had  _trusted_  the man with her sons? "And it's  _not_ —"

"Buffy, I have visions!"

"So? Alex set things on  _fire_. It doesn't mean anything. No, Sam," she snapped when he opened his mouth to argue. "Will says the blocks could have opened psychic gifts as well as blocked the old ones entirely. Your visions aren't evidence either way."

"You just  _happened_  to ask?" he scoffed.

"No, I didn't just  _happen_  to ask," she shot back, "it only made  _sense_  to ask. I try not to take any more risks than I have to."

"Keeping me alive is a risk," he said quietly, "and you're taking it."

"It's my decision, not yours."

"And when you get attached to us?" he demanded. "If something wakes Alex up and you can't do anything  _because_  we're your sons? What then, Buffy?"

"I put a sword through the heart of a man I loved when I was seventeen," she said coldly. "I  _can_  do it, Sam. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to do everything in my power to prevent it from being necessary in the first place. Now go get some sleep."


	25. Chapter 25

 

Buffy and Willow were busy people—with the shops, with their  _real_  jobs, with Dean. Corinna followed her orders to the letter, and her orders were to keep Sam away from Dean. When she was on duty, she did not stray from Dean's room, not for food, not to stretch her legs, not for  _anything_ ; if she needed supplies, she summoned someone from the bedroom door.

Sam was left on his own. He didn't think it was intentional. They just didn't know what to do with him. They weren't used to having hunters underfoot. It was Kellie, the girl from the sidewalk that first day, who finally fixed that.

Kellie was a part-time student, as well as part-time shopgirl downstairs, part-time cleaning service and cook for Buffy and Willow, self-proclaimed "errand girl 42," and full-time Slayer (she was, in fact, the "oldest," in terms of training, of the babies, which made her the unofficial third-in-command of the Cleveland contingent). He'd gotten used to seeing her in the apartment at all hours, since she apparently had free run of the building, but it wasn't until she commandeered him and the Impala that they actually spoke. The first time, it was a grocery run—stocking the apartment, the gym, and buying some things for Mrs. Haya in payment for the use of her allotted parking spaces in the apartment building next door—but grocery runs were only once every couple of weeks, with the exception of perishables; Willow preferred to shop for those on her own.

Kellie came in one afternoon about a week after Sam had mailed off the DNA tests, saw him staring blindly at the TV with the volume cranked up to drown out the sound of Dean's delirious yelling, and promptly dragged him downstairs to the gym. She pointed him towards a punching bag, sat back, and let him try to destroy it. The next day, when she found him in the apartment again, she dragged him down to the shop and made him stay there for her entire shift. If he went  _close_  to the stairwell door, she whacked him on the back of the head (twice she used books). The third day she threatened to chain him to a table in the library. The fourth day she dragged him next door to help clean Mrs. Haya's apartment, and took an unholy glee in watching him nearly have a heart attack when he found out the hard way that Mrs. Haya was half snake-demon.

He got the hint. After that, he made sure he wasn't in the apartment when Kellie arrived. It was just easier.

At first, he spent all his time in the library, browsing through the massive occult collection, taking notes for the day they hit the road again. It was a refreshing change, actually, to have so much information on hand, a feast after the famine. He could have filled twenty books the size of Dad's journal with what he found; he settled for typing it all in, so he wouldn't have to listen to Dean bitching later about his handwriting.

Slayers came in for training two or three days a week, according to a fluid schedule that barely deserved the name. The older ones, the ones who had gotten out of high school and audibly gritted their teeth every time they were referred to as "babies," were as likely to show up in the morning before the shops opened as in the evening. The end of the school day brought in the  _real_  babies, packs of middle- and high-schoolers who skittered through the library on their way to the gym, shooting curious, dagger-sharp looks at Sam—looks that usually resulted in a crop of giggles. He didn't need Kellie's sly remarks to know that half the babies had developed massive crushes on him. He was just glad Dean wasn't awake to see it, because Dean would needle him over that  _forever_.

In addition to training, Slayers and Watchers all showed up on Tuesday nights—not for training per se, but for Meeting, which every one of them pronounced with a clear capital  _M_. From what Sam had pieced together, it was when they got together to compare notes, to try to track any buildup of supernatural forces that could cause problems. He had the impression that they'd overlooked encroaching evil in the past by  _not_  keeping an eye on such things. Corinna stayed late on Tuesdays to watch Dean, and Sam usually got stuck minding the store.

He didn't know what made them change their minds and invite him one week, but he suspected it had more to do with Kellie than Buffy or Willow. They'd been trying to keep him away from most of the Slayers—to spare him further indignity at the hands of the babies, maybe, or to prevent those crushes interfering if Alex's powers resurfaced. He wasn't sure. He had a hard time reading Buffy.

Kellie was waiting for him the library at six-thirty, just like they'd arranged. Sam wasn't sure  _why_  he needed an escort in, since nobody had ever questioned his right to be in the gym, and there weren't any more guards at the doors tonight than there were at any other times. "Sit down anywhere," Kellie told him, hitting a switch. Panels in the wall shared with the library slid back, revealing a massive whiteboard with a list of names—Slayers' names, he realized, and a tally of—of dead things?

"You guys  _keep count?_ "

She shrugged and picked up a marker. "Lets us keep track of weird increases," she said, adding her latest totals to the board—five vampires, two demons, one "unknown sighting."

"Unknown?" he asked.

"There's always a few strays we don't recognize. I give the Watchers a description, they play librarian, usually we figure out what it is."

"And if you don't?"

"Long as it's not hurting anybody? Keep an eye on it, but pretty much leave it alone otherwise."

He could just imagine what most hunters would say to that. Dean had enough trouble with the idea that  _supernatural_  might not equal _evil_ ; left to his own devices, he'd still destroy first and dissect motives later. Most hunters wouldn't do that much.

People started trickling in—women, mainly, but a lot of them were older than the Slayers he'd met, old enough to be his mother; a few looked old enough to be  _grandmothers_. The Slayers were easy to pick out, because they did exactly what Kellie had: they went straight to the whiteboard and added their own tallies.  _God_ , they were young, so young... Sure, he and Dean had started out younger, but they'd been  _raised_  to hunt; Sam had never known anything else before he ran away to school. How did these little girls manage the jump from  _normal_  to  _Slayer?_

There were older women, too, and—to his surprise—seven men who sat in a group with those older women, off to the side. "Watchers," Kellie whispered, shoving a bottle of water at him when he opened his mouth to ask a question. He had the distinct impression she'd just ordered him to shut up. Dad would have loved to have  _her_  for a kid.

There were more people than he'd thought; the gym took up most of the second floor, twice as much space as the library, and by the time the clock on the wall struck seven, it was packed. Sam recognized a few of older ones, the ones who worked in the store or helped out with cleaning the apartment. They were the only ones who weren't shooting him curious sideways looks.

"All right, everybody, shut up!" Buffy shouted—he hadn't even seen her come in—and the room went quiet. "First things first, we have a visitor tonight." Every eye in the room turned to him. He did his best not to squirm under the sudden attention. "This is Sam Winchester. His brother Dean's sick, magically, so they're staying here until Dean gets better."

No mention of their possible relation to Buffy. He wondered if it was intentional.

"Sam and Dean are hunters," Buffy went on. "If you want to ask Sam questions about the kind of stuff he's fought, how he's fought it, compare demon notes, I'm sure he won't mind. On the other hand, if I hear about you making asking him out into a dare, you'll have  _me_  to deal with. You treat him professionally, like you would a visiting Slayer, is that understood?"

Jesus. When she wanted to, the woman gave orders just as sternly as Dad.

Wait—they made  _dares_  out of getting dates?

A blonde in her early twenties raised her hand—and waved it, as if she had a  _very_  urgent question. "Buffy, what if we actually  _want_ —"

"Nora, you stay the hell away from him." The room erupted into laughter. "For the rest of you— Oh, just  _behave_ , will you?"

So  _that_  was Nora. Kellie had warned him about her. So had Mrs. Haya. And Willow. And—well, he'd lost count.

"Will, you want to give the Watchers' report?" Buffy stepped out of the way for Willow, who began talking about an upcoming vampire holiday and lunar cycles. After that, the Slayers began reporting on their past assignments and arguing—in the vicious, cutthroat way only teenage girls could—over their next assignments.

Years of hunting in secrecy, of never daring to mention the "family business," made the openness of Meeting as bizarre to Sam as any creature he and Dean had ever fought. Even in a so-called "safe" place like the Roadhouse, hunters spoke guardedly, in codes and shorthand, to protect themselves and the occasional non-hunter who wandered in looking for nothing more magical than a beer.

Now he was watching two teenagers—who  _had_  to be cheerleaders in their normal lives, there was no way those overly-perky little girls could be  _anything_  else—arguing over a kill, and who got the points, and the finer distinctions of evil things. And the rest of the room? They were  _bored_.

Dad would have had them all running laps around Cleveland by now, or doing enough sit-ups to cripple an Army unit. Buffy and Will just let the argument play out until it looked like they might actually start fighting, at which point Buffy snapped "Split it evenly" and Willow made the appropriate notation on the whiteboard. "Anybody else got anything?"

When no one did, the Watchers retreated to the library; the youngest ones—probably the ones with homework to do and school in the morning—left in a giggling group. The remaining Slayers, college age and older, separated into knots of four or five to spar. He realized with a start of shock that they were practicing group tactics; one would play Slayer, the others enemies. Sam wasn't sure he liked the implications. It made sense, in a sick kind of way—if he knew he had to fight superheroines, he'd probably attack with a group too, just to up the odds—but he didn't  _like_  it.

They were amazing fighters, though. Sam had never seen anything like it. The skills he'd learned were  _nothing_  compared to what the Slayers were demonstrating. It wasn't just speed and strength, either. There were moves in there he couldn't even  _recognize_ , and between Dad, Dean, and the other hunters in his childhood—well, he wasn't exactly ignorant on the topic.

The idea came to him when Nora did a blurry flippy-thing that he could hardly even  _follow_ , and that only one of the other Slayers (Kellie, and odd how much he felt a sense of  _pride_  about that, like she was  _his_  Slayer) managed to counter it. Sam turned it over in his head while they continued to spar, and by the time they stopped for the night, he'd convinced himself it was a good idea. "Kellie," he began, hesitantly, when the others were gone and he and she were cleaning up the gym, "can I ask a favor?"

"Like I'm gonna tell the boss's kid no?" she asked, laughing, as she ripped open a case of water and started refilling the fridge.

"Train me."

She froze. " _What?_ "

"Train me." She kept staring at him, so he added, "In fighting."

"You want  _Slayer_  training?" she asked incredulously. "Sam, don't take this the wrong way, but you couldn't—"

"I know, I know, I don't stand a chance of getting as good as you guys, but— Dad raised us to always look for the advantage. Just sparring with you would help my fighting skills."

Kellie's eyes darted toward the door, undoubtedly checking to see if Buffy could overhear. "I don't know, Sam—"

"It could save my life someday," he cajoled. "And—"

"And it would give you something to keep you busy," she finished.

He couldn't quite meet her gaze. How had she gotten to know him so well? Finally he nodded. "Yeah. That too."

"I'll talk to some of the girls," she said finally. "Get a group of varied skills, so we can find out where you are in relation to us. Sound good?"

"Sure."

"You'll probably be fighting the babies a lot. Especially to start."

Babies. Little girls with starry-eyed crushes and the ability to break a man's wrist in a single move, given free rein to have their hands all over him. He managed not to grimace. "I expected as much."

"God. You really  _are_  serious about this."

He forced a smile. "Winchesters don't joke about hunting or fighting."

"I'll have to ask—"

"Don't bring Buffy into this."

She gave him a look. "Sam, whether or not she's your mama, she's the  _Primary_. She's kinda in charge, you know? Anything I—"

"She'll think she has to help. I—" He stopped, searching for a decent argument. "Parents make shitty teachers, Kellie. Especially if it's life or death. It—it just doesn't end well."

Kellie tilted her head and studied him a moment. "Sounds like the voice of experience."

"It is."

"Mm-hm." She thought a moment. "I have to at least tell Willow. If I explain, she won't tell Buffy. Besides, one of them needs to know." He hesitated. "Sam, it's their playground. They get to make the rules. And I don't want them pissed at me. The Slayers are all I've got."


	26. Chapter 26

Sam ducked a fist and was rewarded with a solid kick to his back that sent him halfway across the room and draped him across a pommel horse.

" _Dammit!_  Sam, you said you  _got_  this!"

Gingerly, he undraped himself, forcing himself to not think about the bruise he'd just gotten. Weeks of training with Slayers, and he could still barely hold his own against any of the ones past sixteen. Lakisha (one of the few babies who did  _not_  have a crush on him, thank God) was  _fourteen_  and not even  _five_  feet tall and  _still_  routinely kicked his ass. "I— _shit!_  I thought I did!" He staggered back to the mat. "I think I saw it coming this time, though."

Kind of sad, really, how much of an accomplishment  _that_  was. Dad would freak if—

_Yeah, well, Dad never had to fight a Slayer. And if Dean says one word, I'm sending Lakisha after him. See how well he likes getting knocked out by a little girl._

" _Jesus_ , Sam—" Kellie touched the side of his face; it stung, and her fingers came away bloody. "Buffy's gonna  _kill_  me!"

"I knew what I was getting into." By the look on her face, the lie was about as convincing as it sounded. "Again. I want to get this down—"

"No. Class over." She handed him a towel. "Besides, I told Leslie I'd take her shift; it's her boyfriend's birthday."

"I thought that was last week."

"New boyfriend."

" _Another_  one?" Nora went through at least seven guys a week, which was impressive enough, but Leslie went through  _boyfriends_ ; this was the fifth one since he'd met her. "How do you guys do this?"

"Do what?"

"Have a life  _and_  hunt."

"Slay," she corrected with a grin. "And the answer is lots of cooperation and not so much vengeance."

He raised an eyebrow. "Do I detect criticism?"

"If you'd met Mrs. Haya before you met us, would you have left her alone?"

"Sure."

"Even if you'd met her during a molt?"

"Might have taken a little persuasion," he admitted.

"And Dean?" She had a point. "Don't get me wrong," she went on, "you hunters do a lot of good. Fill in the gaps, I guess you'd say, hit the things that are smart enough to stay away from us and not powerful enough to catch our attention. Plus there was that whole only-one-Slayer thing for so long. But ninety percent of you are motivated solely by vengeance, and you'll kill anything  _remotely_  supernatural. You don't get that there's plenty of things we call 'demons' that actually serve a purpose in the world. It's like spiders."

"Spiders," he repeated skeptically.

"Me, I can't stand the things. Squash 'em every chance I get. But if everybody exterminated them blindly, we'd be up to our necks in bugs."

"We've never killed anything that wasn't hurting anybody."

"You, maybe not. Dean, maybe not. But your father? All the other hunters out there?" He thought immediately of Gordon and his mad desire to kill every vampire he came across. "See? You know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyhow. Time for my shift. Put a band-aid on that before Buffy sees it, will you?"

He grinned. "I thought you said I was too pretty and needed some scars."

She grinned right back. "You, maybe.  _Me?_  No way. I need all the looks I can keep. And if I mar her precious baby boy, she's gonna mar  _me_."

"I am  _not_ —"

"Then  _you_  tell her, because I got enough problems in my life without taking on the Primary." She threw her towel at him and, laughing, headed downstairs.

Sam straightened up the gym—the last thing he wanted was the afternoon groups complaining that the gym was a mess, since that would go straight back to Buffy and she'd find out about this training—and headed upstairs. He pushed open the apartment door—and froze. Corinna had left Dean's door open, and he was crying out—

_Oh, God, no._  He leaned against the door, choking down the instinct to go running in there and defend Dean against whatever was tormenting him, the way he did every day, every night. There wasn't any point. Corinna would just throw him out. She'd wake Buffy up if she had to. And it wasn't like he could get into Dean's head and force the memories out, though he'd sell his soul for that ability, for something  _useful_  instead of headache-ridden visions and random bouts of telekinesis.

He took a deep breath, bracing himself, fully intending to open the door and go in and go to his room—

Sam was back in the library before he even realized he was running downstairs. He stood there a minute, savoring the peace and the smell of old books, but it was only a moment's respite. He'd learned that the hard way. Dean's room was directly above the library, and some quirk of the walls or the pipes or the ventilation carried certain sounds. If Dean started screaming again— _really_  screaming—the library ceiling wasn't thick enough to block the noise.

There was no pattern to them. Dean was either unconscious, so far gone that he responded to  _nothing_ , or he was screaming at ghosts in his head. Some days he never broke the silence. Some days he screamed himself hoarse. The sedatives didn't always work.

There were more of those days as time went on. Sam didn't know if it was because Dean was building up a tolerance to the sedatives, or if the dreams were getting worse. He just knew that it was getting harder and harder to listen to, and not just for him; mornings often saw Buffy or Willow or whoever had nighttime Dean-guard looking ragged and pale and rewarding herself with a massive cup of coffee or hot chocolate or whatever caffeine she preferred. Breakfast was  _not_  a pleasant meal in the apartment anymore.

Another scream made him flinch. It was going to be one of those days.

He went downstairs.

There weren't any customers; the Halloween rush was long over, and Kellie said business probably wouldn't pick up again until after Thanksgiving, when the local Wiccans and New Agers started thinking about Solstice decorations. She shot him a sympathetic glance as he entered the store, but didn't say anything. Silently, he dug the duster out of the cleaning cart and began halfheartedly flicking it over the knickknack shelves. It wasn't much, but it was something to do, something away from Dean's screaming until the fit passed or the sedatives kicked in.

_How do they expect me to live like this, not knowing what's going on except what they tell me, believing that stupid doctor just because his_ name _is Doctor, listening to Dean screaming and not doing anything? It's ridiculous! I'm his brother, I'm his_ family _, I have a right to help, no matter who Buffy says she is—_

A particularly tacky Mother Earth statuette toppled to the floor and shattered. Sam glanced nervously at Kellie, but she was sorting the mail, too engrossed in her task to notice that the statue had been on a shelf three feet away from him. Well, at least  _something_  was going right for once.

He began picking up the pieces of Mother Earth, wondering how much this little bout of telekinesis was going to cost him. The tackier things in this store were usually the most expensive. And Willow wasn't about to take one of Dean's fake credit cards.

_It's not right. They could at least tell me what he's remembering that makes him scream like that. They don't have to tell me which lifetime it was. Especially when he's screaming for Dad. Or—_  No. He was  _not_  going to think about the fact that sometimes the only recognizable word in all that yelling was his name. That those were sometimes the most agonized-sounding fits of all.

"Sam," Kellie interrupted his thoughts. He looked up to see her waving a thick envelope. "You got a letter."

_A letter?_

The envelope had the logo of the DNA lab. He tore it open, scanned the letter inside—and reached into his pocket to make sure he still had the car keys. "I'm going out," he said flatly.

"Sam—" Kellie began, but he pretended not to hear.

In the familiar shelter of the Impala, with one of Dean's antique tapes playing to drown out the silence, Sam re-read the letter. Studied the accompanying pages crammed full of long scientific words and tables and diagrams that might as well have been Russian for all he could read them. But he understood enough.

Buffy was their mother. And their sister.

Even the lab didn't want to believe it, as the letter concluded with an apology and an offer to retest for half-price if uncontaminated samples could be obtained.

He crumpled the pages in his fist and threw them at the windshield, then collapsed against the steering wheel, sobbing. When Jess had been killed, at least he'd still had his family, meager comfort though that had been at the time. Now—

Now what did he have? Dad hadn't been Dad and Dean—oh,  _God._  Dean.

There had been a tiny ember of hope banked deep inside: that Dean's illness would turn out to be something else entirely, that Buffy and Willow would be mistaken, and when Dean woke up they would move on like nothing had ever happened, with perhaps a few new friends to show for it. It wasn't like they didn't  _need_  new friends, friends who could help them with tough cases and shelter them if they were hurt.

But Buffy and Willow had been right, and that meant that even if Dean came out of his illness—

_What if it's Liam that wakes up in there, and not Dean?_

_What the hell am I going to do?_


	27. Chapter 27

Some nights, patrolling wasn't worth the time it took to get dressed.

She'd been patrolling less lately. They had more than enough Slayers to keep things down to a simmer (as Nora liked to put it), so she only patrolled when she felt the apartment starting to close in around her, or when she just couldn't take another minute of sitting beside Dean's bed, praying he'd wake up, praying that Sam would hold together a little longer. The vamps should at least have the courtesy to show up when she  _did_  patrol, so she could get the urge to kill things out of her system. That was one thing they'd learned since Willow's spell: long stretches of peace and quiet made Slayers so cranky that PMS seemed like a vacation in comparison.

There was a Post-It on the door, one of Will's cutesy die-cut ones. The message was simple, printed in large letters: TALK TO YOUR SON.

_Shit._  She'd known this was coming. She found Sam sleeping in the den more mornings than not, and Dean wasn't the only one yelling in his sleep anymore. She didn't know if Sam was even aware of it. Will had put a few spells on the doors, to make sure he didn't tumble downstairs if he started sleepwalking, but Buffy just didn't know if there was anything else to do.

She pulled the Post-It down and stuffed it into her pocket, mentally bracing for whatever was on the other side of the door, and went in.

Sam was on the floor in the den, slumped against the couch staring at a dark television, a half-empty bottle beside him. "You're drunk," Buffy said, surprised. Dean, she could see getting drunk—for amusement, for kicks, out of sheer boredom—but  _Sam?_

"No shit," came the acid, but unslurred, response. He must be one of those coherent drunks. Maybe it was a side effect of being a giant, because he sure as hell hadn't gotten that from her.

She sat down on the couch and couldn't resist the urge to ruffle his hair. He growled. Well, grumbled. He was too far gone for a decent growl. "What brought this on?"

"Nothin'."

" _Sam._ "

"Just leave me alone, okay?"

"No."

"None of your—"

"Sam, so help me, if you try to tell me it's none of my business, I'm going to smack the drunk out of you." No answer. "Kellie said you got a letter. Bad news?" He shook his head. She ruffled his hair again, trying to see if she could provoke an answer, and he batted awkwardly at her hand and attempted to get away. Willow probably knew a word for it; to Buffy it looked like a half-assed combo of a slide and a crawl. "Sam, what did it say?"

"Nothin'." He pulled himself up, using the arm of the couch for leverage. "I'm goin' to bed," he announced, swaying a little bit. "Couldn't find anythin'," he added, half under his breath.

"Couldn't find any what?" she asked—and then she realized exactly what he was talking about. "You went out hunting, didn't you?" She jumped to her feet. "Didn't you? You went looking for something to kill!  _Sam!_ "

"What d'you care?" he demanded. "I'm not one of the babies! I'm not your re—resh—" The word tripped him up.

"Responsibility, and you sure as hell are! I'm the Primary  _and_  your mother and as long as I'm either I—"

" _You're not my mother!_ " he screamed at her. "You're a goddamned stranger, an' I shoulda lissened to Dean an' lef' here's soon's we heard your stupid story! He wouldn't be sick!"

"You know that's not true! The blocks were already breaking!"

"Jus' 'cause Willow says it doesn't make it true!"

" _Dammit_ , Sam—"

"He was fine till we came here! Nothin' was wrong!"

_Fine. Have it your way._  "If you wanted to kill something," she said, forcing the words out between clenched teeth, "all you had to do was  _ask_. I would have sent you out on patrol with—"

That was the wrong thing to say. "I don' need a fuckin'  _babysitter!_ " he yelled, stepping so close to her that she had to crane her neck to look at him. "I've been huntin' all my damn life! Longer'n you've been a Slayer!"

"And until you can beat me in a fair fight you're still an amateur!" she shot back. "Even Slayers die out there, and I am  _not_  going to be the one that has to tell Dean that I let you get killed while he was sick!"

"That's not gonna be a problem if he never wakes up!" His voice cracked, and she thought she saw tears in his eyes. "He's  _not_  wakin' up, Buffy, it's been too long—" He collapsed onto the couch.

"Sam—"

"I can't lose him. Not now. Not after—"

"You're not going to."

"You don't—"

"You're not going to lose him because  _I'm_  not going to lose him!" she shouted. "I don't plan on losing either one of you, not after all this!" Sam blinked at her. "I had to give you up once! I'm not doing it again!"

"Okay," he said meekly, shrinking back into the couch.

She laughed in spite of herself at the sudden change in his mood. "Are you always like this when you're drunk?"

"Like what?" he asked innocently.

"Like—oh, never mind. Time for bed. Can you walk?"

"Sure." He lurched to his feet and swayed dramatically. She slipped her arm around him and helped him back to his room. That was more complicated than it sounded, considering the difference in their heights, plus the fact that he kept mistaking her feet for his feet and trying to move them. Bed was another matter entirely. She'd never been so glad that the Watchers had voted for king-size guest beds before. It made it harder for him to miss.

He collapsed onto the bed. "Hold it," she ordered, and knelt to pull off his shoes. He just looked at her like she'd pulled off his feet. "When you sober up, we're going to have a talk."

"Sure," he agreed, and his eyes rolled back and he toppled backwards onto the bed.

***

Buffy went downstairs, to Willow's office, where the computer lived. Dean wasn't improving. Sam was a wreck. Time for desperate measures.

Willow had set the messenger program she used with Xander to start automatically, for which Buffy thanked anything in hearing. No matter how many times Willow tried to explain things to her, she still couldn't manage much more than cut-and-paste. She'd've never found the program on her own.

_Will? You're up late._

_It's Buffy._

_Buff!_  If it was possible for a computer program to seem happy, this one managed.  _Finally joining the rest of us in this century?_

_Business, Xander._

_You're no fun._

_Is Ellie busy? Can she come here?_

_This is about the twins._  Before she could type a response, another one popped up.  _Healing them isn't the way._

_Dean could be dying in there! And what it's doing to Sam, I can't watch this, Xander!_

_I know, and I hate it for you. But what Ellie does isn't medicine. It's magical, it's resetting. He could revert all the way back to what he was before Will erased everything. You'd lose Dean entirely._

_I don't care!_

_Yes, you do. Because Ellie thinks there's a chance that resetting Dean would also reset Sam. Which means bringing back Alex. And if_ you _don't remember what he did to you, we_ do _, and we're not letting him do it again._

Buffy fought the urge to smash the keyboard.  _How do you know?_

_Because I already asked her. A month ago. Because I knew eventually you'd get desperate enough to think of her. I love you, Buff, but you can be predictable._

_THESE ARE MY SONS!_

_I understand, Buffy, I do._

_You wouldn't dare say this to my face, Xander Harris._

_And that's why we're not coming for Thanksgiving this year. I hope he gets better, Buffy. I really do. So does Ellie. We want to meet them someday. Meet them again. Whatever. But not now. It's not a risk either one of us can take._

A message saying "offline" popped up, and she swore bitterly, and kicked the desk.


	28. Chapter 28

Dishwashing was Buffy's answer to therapy. They had a dishwasher (lacking that, they had a baby-Slayer labor force), but whenever things got too much, Buffy found herself in the kitchen up to her elbows in dirty dishes and soap suds. Or at least clean dishes that looked slightly dusty. Killing things was more fun, not to mention easier on the hands, but since none of the usual nasties were showing up lately....

Sam shuffled into the kitchen while she was on her second sinkful; she'd moved from the regular dishes to the good china, the stuff the Council insisted they have for "special occasions" and that they had yet to use. He looked—well, he looked like a embarrassed man suffering from an intense hangover. "You going to tell me what sent you out hunting?" Sam reached into his pocket and tossed a crumpled letter on the table. She dried her hands so she could pick it up. "DNA results?" she guessed.

"You know they are."

"That could be a sugar cookie recipe for all  _I_  can tell," she said dryly, laying it back down on the table, "but I don't think sugar cookies would piss you off so much you'd go looking for a kill." She studied him a moment. "Sit down before you fall over, Sam. You like hot chocolate?" He shrugged. "I'll take that as a yes." She pulled a couple of mugs out of one cabinet, a canister of hot chocolate mix out of another. "Not the news you wanted, I take it."

"I don't know who's got it worse," he said quietly as she stirred, "us for losing everything we ever knew, or you for having to go through that."

"You haven't lost anything." She set a mug and a bottle of Tylenol in front of him. He glanced up at her, then silently took the bottle and shook a couple of pills into his hand. "Nothing you hadn't already lost, anyway. Marshmallows?"

He nodded and tossed back the drugs, and she dumped a handful in. "Dean's going to take it bad," he said, sipping at the hot chocolate. "He remembers Mom. Mary."

"You don't?"

"No." He set the mug down with a  _clunk_. "Christ. Everything I remember—"

"Everything  _you_  remember happened," she said gently.

"How do you know?"

"Because you're the younger one, which means Will regressed you so far back she didn't  _have_  to create any new memories for you."

He looked up at her, his eyes dark. "But what if Dean doesn't remember? What if he doesn't remember  _anything?_ "

She sat down. "He'll remember, Sammy."

He gave her a pained look. "Do you  _have_  to call me that?"

"It's what mothers and big sisters do." She grinned. "And as luck would have it, I'm both."

He flinched. "I'm sorry."

"Why? You didn't have anything to do with it." She patted his hand. "Ellie fixed most of the trauma. I have more issues about losing you guys than I do about the attack now."

"That's not—"

"Ellie's not much with the fair. She has her rules and she keeps them, and as far as she's concerned, there's a difference between trauma and grief."

"I'm sorry," he said again, in a soft voice.

"Sam." He looked up. "If you apologize again for something you couldn't help, I'm gonna lock you in a closet with Priss."

That made him smile, just a bit, and he started to stand, but apparently the headache was too much; he slumped back into the chair with a groan, letting his head fall into his hands. "Do you drink?" he asked, from somewhere behind all that floppy hair.

"Not much," she admitted, trying not to smile. She wondered if she could talk him into a haircut.

"Smart."

"Oh, not that much. It's just that the first time I went on a drinking binge, I turned into a cavewoman." He jerked his head up, and groaned again. "You think twice about beer after that." He stared at her. "My life is just as weird as yours, Sam. Maybe weirder. Here." She fixed him another cup.

"I don't—"

"Drink it," she ordered. "Even vamps swear by the Summers hot chocolate."

He blinked at her. "Vampires drink hot chocolate?"

"Spike did. But he was—well, he was Spike. He was kind of weird."

"Vampires. Hot chocolate." Sam took a long drink. "I think you're right."

"I am?"

"Your life  _does_  sound weirder than ours." She chuckled. "What do I call you?"

"Buffy will work."

"But—"

"You've lost too much as it is, Sammy. I—I just want to be part of your lives from now on. That's all."

"You're not just somebody we met on a hunt. You're our  _mother_."

"But I didn't raise you. I wasn't—"

He half-smiled. "Neither was Mom. If you want to be technical about it."

"That doesn't change anything."

He met her gaze, eyes solemn, and for the first time she was able to see  _Sam_  without the shadow of  _Alex_. "It does for me," he said.


	29. Chapter 29

The people in the pet store knew Dean by name, and not just because the owner was Mommy's best friend. Mommy had decided that it was easier to stop at the pet store first and leave Dean there, where Angie could watch him and he could play with the kittens, than try to handle him  _and_  Sammy. Angie said he was a good kitten salesman. He had a name tag that she kept behind the counter, and whenever a kitten sold while he was there, she gave him a dollar and said it was his commission. He wasn't sure what that meant, but he did know that dollars meant ice cream. One day he'd sold  _three_  kittens, and it had meant ice cream  _and_  a new toy car.

Daddy talked about getting a dog when Sammy was bigger. But Dean didn't want a dog. He wanted a kitten. He'd asked for one for Christmas, but Mommy had said he couldn't get a kitten  _and_  a brother, and the brother was already on the way. He didn't understand that, because if Mommy was making Sammy then surely Santa could spring for a kitten, but at least she listened and didn't tell him dogs were better for little boys, the way Daddy always did.

Mommy said Daddy was just that way, that it was a Marine thing. Maybe, but if Marines couldn't have kittens then Dean didn't want to be a Marine anymore. He wondered if Army guys got to have kittens. Probably not the Navy. Kittens didn't like water.

A little gray-and-black kitten pounced on his finger. Dean played tug-of-war, let it gnaw on his finger the way Sammy sometimes did, though the kitten had teeth and Sammy didn't so it hurt a little more. When it got tired, Dean picked it up and rocked the tiny armful the way Mommy rocked Sammy. It yawned and snuggled into his shirt—

No, the kitten wasn't tiny and it wasn't gray and black; she was full-grown and tortoiseshell and her name was Priss.

And Alex had her by the scruff.

"Give her back!" Liam yelled at his brother, struggling to get free of the sheets that had wrapped around him like so many ropes. Priss yowled and hissed and swatted, but Alex was holding her at arm's length, shaking her and hitting her and pulling her tail with his free hand. "Let her go, Alex!"

"Make me," Alex taunted, his eyes flashing yellow. The sheets flapped at Liam's face, blinding him, driving him back into the corner.

Giles always said that there was no reason for Liam to not be able to defend himself against Alex. Mommy had started teaching him basic fighting skills when Giles mentioned it to her, the one kind of lesson that Alex didn't get.

They thought it was enough. They never saw Alex's eyes glow. They didn't know how much stronger Alex was when his eyes started glowing, the way the world quit working the way it was supposed to and obeyed Alex's every  _wish_. Alex never  _did_  this around the grown-ups, never slammed them into walls and tied them up with sheets—

" _ALEX!_  Put her down!"

Mommy's voice.

Mommy was standing in the door, mad and fierce, like the angels in Giles' books. "Alexander Daniel Summers, you put that cat down right this minute!"

The sheets tightened around Liam. Alex snarled.

"I've  _told_  you about—  _Jesus Christ,_  Alex! What are you doing to—"

Alex jerked his free hand, and Mommy slammed into the ceiling and stayed there. The air was getting hot—

Priss screamed, and Liam realized that the heat was coming from behind him. He craned his neck and saw smoke rising from the curtains, and they burst into flames. The sheets loosened, like Alex couldn't manage the fire and the sheets and holding Mommy up, and Liam fought his way free and lunged for his twin. "Let her go!" he screamed.

***

" _LET HER GO!_ "

The scream jerked Sam out of sleep.

He sighed and rolled over. He'd reached the point where the screaming mostly didn't wake him; if it did, it was a bad night. He didn't even get out of bed anymore. It broke his heart and took every ounce of strength he had, but he just lay there, silently praying to anything listening—he was no longer choosy—that the screams would stop soon.

Sometimes there were words in Dean's screaming, words clear even through walls and closed doors. Sometimes he screamed desperately for their mother, and there was no way to tell if he wanted Buffy or Mary. Sometimes it was rage—he'd yell at demons, at Dad, at Sam, at anything that had ever gotten in his way. A few times it had been pain, the hurt of old wounds long since healed.

Once—just once, but it had been enough to make Sam bury his head beneath the pillows and sing to himself to try to drown the noise out—Dean had screamed in sheer wordless terror, the kind of fear Dean Winchester simply did  _not_  show. Not even on planes. That had been one of the nights the sedatives would  _not_  kick in, and Dean had screamed until his voice was gone, until even Priss, who had otherwise refused to leave him, finally slunk off to hide under a chair in the living room. No one had gotten any sleep; Willow had shut down the shops and Buffy had been forced to turn over all the patrols to the babies for a few days.

There was no way to tell which personality was doing the screaming: Dean, or the child buried beneath the memory-block. Sam had made that observation once, only to have Willow gently remind him that they were  _both_  loose in there now, and it didn't matter  _which_  was doing the screaming.

They still wouldn't admit that Dean was Liam, or that Sam was Alex.

Sam lay there and listened, hating himself. All the years Dean had taken care of him, all the times Dean had  _saved_  him, and all he could do was lie here and  _listen!_  They wouldn't even let him in the room! Not even when they'd managed to pump Dean full of enough drugs to temporarily silence the dreams. Kellie and Viv and Nora took shifts on Dean-watch at night, when Corinna wasn't there, because Buffy and Willow couldn't drop all their responsibilities, but not Sam. Not his own  _brother_.

He'd obeyed the ultimatums. He'd ignored the screaming.

Not anymore.

Buffy was their mother. He'd accepted that. But she hadn't been there all those years when it was just him and Dean and Dad against the world. She didn't know what it was to  _never_  have normal, because she'd been normal until she was called.

They were Winchesters. Not Summerses. She didn't understand the difference.

He was going to get into that room if it killed him.


	30. Chapter 30

Corinna had Thanksgiving off. Buffy and Willow, determined that Sam was going to have a normal Thanksgiving if it killed them, were in the kitchen, beating the feast into submission, and Kellie had been sent on a run for last-minute ingredients, a little  _too_  excited over the possibility of a fistfight in the grocery store.

Sam hadn't had the heart to tell them that Thanksgiving was not typically observed by Winchesters. He hadn't had a traditional Thanksgiving until the year Jess dragged him to her grandmother's; he still remembered his elementary-school confusion over the fuss about turkeys and how Dean had explained it away by telling him that most people were just too stupid to realize that turkeys were demonic. That hadn't gone over too well on the playground, no more than Dean's stories about Santa being the secret identity of a ninja Transformer.

Besides, if they were going to be so nice as to give him a  _chance_....

He slipped into Dean's room after the fourth crash of pans—from the sound of it, Slayers and witches, despite all their powers, were not terribly graceful in the kitchen—and stood there at the door, waiting to see if they noticed he was gone. When no one called out for him, he relaxed, just a bit.

The room smelled like a hospital, an impression accented by the soft whirring of the pump for the feeding tube. The nightstand held a neat arrangement of baskets packed full of needles and syringes, bottles of medicines, cans of the nutrient formula that went into the feeding tube; a clipboard full of Corinna's elegant notations lay beneath the lamp. A cardboard box sat on the floor next to the nightstand—probably the rest of the formula; he'd lugged a box upstairs just last week, though he'd only been allowed to set it beside the bedroom door for one of the Slayers to move later. Only the room's décor, the cat curled up protectively next to Dean, and a smattering of cat toys on the floor kept the illusion of "hospital" from being complete.

There were also makeshift restraints on the bed. At the moment, they weren't being used, but there were bruises on Dean's wrists, bruises the same width as the restraints.  _Layers_  of bruises, ranging from black to yellow. "They had to tie you down," Sam whispered, barely aware that he said it aloud. He glanced at the foot of the bed, and noticed that the sheets weren't tucked in—you couldn't tuck the sheets around ankle restraints.

Why hadn't that occurred to him? He  _knew_  Dean's dreams were spilling over into the physical, he'd  _seen_  Dean fighting and thrashing, of  _course_  they'd have to restrain him, for his own safety and theirs too. It was just another reason for Buffy and Willow to want to keep him out of here. A panicking brother wouldn't have helped the situation any at all; the first-aid Dad had taught them was useless for something like this, this couldn't be stitched or bandaged or washed down with alcohol—

_Stop that._

He sat down carefully on the edge of the bed, making sure he wasn't sitting on a wire or important tubing. Dean didn't react. His neck looked bare without the amulet. Corinna must have removed it for safety, just like in a regular hospital, but Sam wished she hadn't. It almost made it seem like Dean was already gone and never coming back.

Priss eyed him suspiciously, but did not move from her spot. "Yeah, you just stay there and behave," he told her, keenly aware of the scars on his forearm, and she yawned. He had the impression it was to show off her teeth, not because she was sleepy. "What did I ever do to you, anyway?"

She hissed.

"I didn't mean it, you know. It wasn't me."

The only answer he got was an angry flick of her tail,  _thwack-thwack_ , before she curled up tighter in her ball and went to sleep.

 _Mutual ignoring. I can handle that._  He turned his attention to Dean, looking for any clue that he might be better, but all Sam noticed was the central line that had been inserted directly into the vein of Dean's neck. Hospitals did that when the arm veins were inaccessible, for whatever reason—but when he gently turned Dean's nearest arm to look, Sam didn't see a single bruise or needle mark. It must have been at least a month since they tried an arm IV. Was it because he thrashed so much in the nightmares, or had they actually exhausted those veins? Either way, that couldn't be good.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he said softly. "I'm  _so_  sorry— If it was me, I know you'd be here, worrying yourself to death and taking care of me, but— They won't let me, Dean. I wanted to, but they said it was too dangerous, they're so worried that if you say something from when we were Buffy's kids, it'll make my blocks shatter the way yours did—" He stopped. He was starting to babble. "I know you'd never leave me, but Dean—there's more than just us at stake. I—I was Alex, and he—he wasn't exactly a good kid. He tried to kill his brother. Didn't even have the excuse of having a ghost messing with his head, the way I did that time. They can't take the risk. And—Dean, I'm not sure I want them to. If I hurt you— God, Dean, I'd never forgive myself." Sam must have expected an answer, because it hurt when there wasn't one, when Dean's only response was to lie there pale and still and barely breathing. "Dean, you gotta fight him. Liam's dead, he can't have you. I need my brother back."

Christ. Not a year ago he'd said something very similar, watching Dean dying in a hospital bed. Except then, at least, he knew Dean was there, in spirit if not in body, lingering, fighting, refusing to go gently.

"You promised Dad you'd watch out for me. Remember? You can't just leave me. There's a demon out there with plans for me. Maybe for both of us, since he's—" No. He was not going to say  _that_  out loud. It was hard enough to admit that Buffy was their mother. "We've still gotta kill him. For Mom and Jess and—and Buffy."

Dean's head turned toward his voice. He murmured something, too low for Sam to make out. "Dean?" he asked, leaning closer. "Come on, Dean, it's me, Sam—"

"Alex," Dean whispered.

Sam's blood ran cold.  _No._  "It's me, Dean, it's Sam.  _Sammy_." No matter how much he hated the nickname, Dean might respond to it better, especially if he was remembering their childhood. Their  _real_  childhood. The Winchester one. "C'mon, Dean,  _remember_ , it's all in there. It's—"

Dean's eyes opened. They focused on Sam; a flicker of recognition passed over Dean's face, and for a second Sam was sure that Dean was back, that it was all over, that everything would be okay.

" _No!_ " Dean screamed, and leapt at Sam. They went tumbling in a confusion of blankets and medical equipment and flying, howling cat. "I won't let you hurt him!"

They hit the floor hard, so hard that Sam's head cracked against the wood and stunned him. It was enough time for Dean to get leverage on him. No, on whoever it was he thought he saw. Sam got his wits together just in time to get punched—twice, three times, four, five. Then Dean abandoned the punching for wrapping his hands around Sam's throat and squeezing.

All this time in bed should have made him weaker, but Dean's grip was like iron. "No more!" he yelled into Sam's face, while Sam clawed at his hands, helplessly. He couldn't  _really_  fight back, he'd hurt Dean, maybe too much for his current state once the nightmare adrenaline wore off; all he could do was try to get his fingers around the hand that was choking him and loosen the grip. That was the drawback of getting attacked by someone you cared about, especially if they weren't in control: they didn't give a damn if  _they_  hurt  _you_.

The world was starting to go black in an all-too-familiar way. Sam was losing control of his hands. Hypoxia. He'd've laughed, if he could; why did everybody always have to try to  _strangle_  him?

" _Dean!_ " A third body slammed into the fight, then a fourth; one wrestled Dean away from him, and the other grabbed Sam and dragged him out of Dean's reach. Through an eye that was already swelling shut, he saw just enough to recognize her. Kellie.

"You okay?" she asked; he nodded, and she dived back into the fray.

It took Buffy  _and_  Kellie to wrestle Dean back into bed—two Slayers, with all their strength, against a single man. "I've got to stop him!" Dean screamed. Kellie managed to get one of Dean's wrists into the restraints, but he was still flailing. "He's hurting—"

Buffy climbed into the bed, pinned Dean's free arm to his chest, and held him tightly. "I know, baby, I know." To Sam's surprise, Dean responded to her voice, began to relax. Kellie was able to get hold of his feet.

Dean's free hand clenched on Buffy's. "Don't you let it kill me," Dean begged.

 _Oh God._  Those words triggered memories that were as painful for Sam as they were for Dean—watching John Winchester, possessed by a demon, ripping apart his son. The wreck. The day Dad died.

"I won't," Buffy murmured, rocking him in her arms like she would a small child, "I promise. You're safe here, baby, I swear, nothing will get to you again—" She nodded at Willow, who approached with a syringe. More drugs.

Sam opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. Maybe drugs were what Dean needed right now. If he kept him from doing this to himself—to others—

Dean slid into a drugged sleep, still muttering, but not thrashing, not fighting, not saying anything clear, and Buffy tied down his other hand and climbed out of bed.

Kellie came over to Sam. "You okay?" she asked, tilting his head back to examine his throat. "Don't talk, just nod—"

"Fine," he rasped, ignoring the order and trying to push himself up.

She shoved him back to the floor, hard. He was going to be bruised on  _both_  ends. "I said not to talk, you idiot."

"Kellie—"

"Goddammit, Sam," Buffy interrupted, "I told you to stay out of here! Didn't you think there was a  _reason?_ "

"I needed to know he was all right!"

"I would have told you if he wasn't!" she shouted back.

"Hey!" Willow yelled at both of them. "Take it outside! He'll pick up the tension and have another fit!"

"I'm not—"

"Sam. Do it for Dean, okay?" Kellie helped him up. "Think about him."

He looked across the room at Dean, tied down to the bed, muttering delirious things. Priss, having recovered her dignity, hopped back up on the bed, walked across Dean's chest, and curled up next to him. Even Sam couldn't miss the way Dean relaxed, even tried to nestle closer to the cat, like a boy who really did love his cat. "For him," he managed, with a glare at Buffy that left the other words unspoken.  _Not for you._

Kellie draped his arm over her shoulder, and poked him in the ribs when he tried to get free, so he let her help him stagger into the back room and collapse onto the couch. Another bruise, but he probably deserved this one. "Sit still while I get some ice," she ordered, and he didn't fight.

If there was one thing in constant supply in this house, it was ice. It took all of five seconds for Kellie to prep two ice packs. One went on his eye. Another went on the back of his head. Sam held them awkwardly, so that Kellie could clean the gouges on his neck—some from Dean's nails, some from his own as he struggled to get free.

"You could've asked," she said softly.

"I  _tried_  asking," he snarled. "It didn't get me any—" He hissed in pain as she dabbed a soaked cotton ball over the scratches. "What  _is_  that?"

"Hydrogen peroxide," she said. "It's good for you. Shut up."

"No." He looked up to see Buffy glaring at him. "Why did you go in there, Sam? We  _told_  you—"

"You haven't told me  _shit_ ," he snapped, "you're too damned scared I'll figure out which twin I was! All you ever tell me is 'he's fine'—well, what the hell was  _that?_  You call that  _fine?_ "

"No, I call that provocation!  _Damn_  it, Sam, don't you get it?  _You_  set off these fits!" He almost dropped an ice pack. "Why do you think we've been trying to keep you so damn busy? You get upset,  _he_  gets upset, and when he's remembering that he's—that he's my son, everything he couldn't defend against then, he's attacking now! The memories are that mixed up!"

"I don't—"

"Obviously."

"What she means, Sam," Kellie said, trying to explain as she taped down gauze on his neck, "is that when Buffy's son remembers feeling helpless, it combines with Dean's memories of how to fight back, and it all gets mixed up, and he takes it out on the nearest target. He's all tangled up inside, and his triggers are—well, just about anything."

"That doesn't make any fucking  _sense!_ "

"Nobody ever said it  _would!_ " Buffy shot back. "And the fact that you want an explanation that  _makes sense_  is just another reason to—"

"Kellie," Willow said from the door, cutting through the argument. "Call Max. Tell him that Dean had an episode and we need to check to make sure he didn't hurt himself or pull anything loose." Kellie glanced at Sam, then nodded and obeyed.

"Max?" Sam asked.

"One of the Watchers. Retired nurse." Buffy was still glaring at him. "The contract with Corinna is very specific. We can't call her on her days off."

He glared right back. "I can't get  _past_  Corinna."

"Which was the fucking idea!" Buffy shouted.

"Stop it!" They all froze. "Buffy, go check on the yams." Buffy opened her mouth to protest, but Willow silenced her—possibly magically—with a flick of her finger. "Now, or you'll ruin the whole dinner." Buffy shot a final glare at Sam, then stalked off towards the kitchen. "Sam. I understand why you did it, but— Well, I'd rather not block you from his room with magic. Just in case of emergency. Will you give me your word that you won't go back in there without one of us?"

"No."

"Sam, please. Every episode like this just sets him back a couple more weeks." She looked at him, considering. "Give me your word, and I'll magic the pain away."

"You can do that?"

"I made you younger, erased your memories, and took you back in time. You think a little  _pain_  is going to stop me?" She had a point. "Now. Promise?"

He sighed...but if this was for Dean.... "I promise," he said, choking on the words. "No more unattended visits."

"Good boy." She came over to him and touched his forehead. The pain seemed to evaporate. "Now. Go rest before dinner. You'll feel better after a nap."


	31. Chapter 31

Thanks to Mrs. Haya and Viv, who had missed the fireworks, Thanksgiving dinner wasn't as strained as it might have otherwise been. Mrs. Haya, who rarely got out of her apartment except to see her herpetologist, was especially talkative, reducing the chance of angry conversation between Sam and Buffy. Although to be perfectly honest, Sam really could have lived without the long ramble about how to properly stuff a camel before roasting, or the dissertation on how turkeys were an ironically wimpy feast-creature for such a macho culture.

On the bright side, she had nothing to say about the raw bruising on his face or the darkening handprints on his throat that made it that much harder for Sam to choke down the slightly-parched turkey. And her rambling was the kind of old-lady rambling that was hard to interrupt politely, so he didn't have a chance to ask if there was any rum to put in his Coke. God knew he could use some numbing right now.

At least that—what had Willow called it? that  _episode_ —hadn't hurt Dean. Max had made sure of that. Max had come out of Dean's room, taken one look at Sam, and said dryly, "I think you've got me checking the wrong brother."

After they finished, Viv walked Mrs. Haya back to her apartment. Buffy started washing dishes, scrubbing with a single-minded ferocity that made Sam ease backwards out of the kitchen. Willow went into Dean's room, resuming the vigil.

Sam watched the door close, feeling helpless. He needed to be in there, with his brother—but if  _he_  was setting off the fits—and he  _had_  promised—

He finally decided to go back to his room, only to run into Kellie as she came out. "Happy Turkey Day," Kellie said, holding out a duffel bag.  _His_  duffel bag, and from the looks of it, fully packed. "You're going home with me tonight."

"I am?" He didn't recall an invitation. Of course, knowing Kellie, this might  _be_  the invitation.

"You need a night where you're not listening to him," she said flatly. "You're gonna snap if you don't. It's my place or Mrs. Haya's. Pick one." He hesitated. "Sam Winchester, do not make me have your mother knock you out. I will  _carry_  you to my apartment if I have to."

"You don't need her to knock me out," he said, and realized a heartbeat later how very stupid that sounded.

"Yeah, but if I hit you, she'll hit  _me_. Come on, you can drive."

"But—"

" _Now_."

***

Kellie's apartment was small, and furnished in third- or fourth-hand furniture, DVDs, and books. It was also much quieter than he had expected, at least until she explained that most of her neighbors were college students who had all gone home with the intent of overdosing on real food. "You have five minutes to pick a movie, or I shall inflict the horrors of Disney upon you," she mock-intoned, heading into another room—the bedroom, he thought, but he didn't try to look.

"But—"

"I feel a craving for  _The Jungle Book_  coming on," she called.

He grabbed the first thing that didn't look like something Dean would willingly watch—that is, the first thing that didn't look like horror, science fiction, or an action movie—and put it in without actually looking at it, and managed not to flinch when  _Love Actually_  started playing. Jess had loved that movie. She'd claimed it was the accents; he suspected it had more to do with the owners of said accents.

"Didn't have you pegged as the chick-flick type," Kellie said behind him, setting a bottle and two glasses of ice on the table. "You okay?"

"It was Jess' favorite movie," he said.

He didn't remember telling her about Jess, but there was sympathy in her eyes. Maybe Buffy or Willow had told her. Maybe he'd just forgotten that he had. "Then we don't have to watch it," she pointed out, quite reasonably, and came over to eject it.

"No," he said, not entirely sure why. "It's all right. I—I think I want to watch something I know all the words to anyway."

"So you don't have to pay attention?"

"Something like that." He sat down, discovered the hard way that the rickety chair was not made for people of his height, and slid to the floor so he could stretch out his legs.

"Sam."

"Yeah."

"It's not your fault."

He looked up to see her holding a glass of—Scotch? He wasn't as good at recognizing liquor on sight as Dean was. "Huh?"

"You have  _got_  to quit blaming yourself for Dean. You're not gonna accomplish anything like that." She shoved the glass into his hand, poured herself one, and sat down on the other side of the table.

He stared into his glass. Made the mistake of glancing up at the TV screen, where the wedding was starting. Jess had fantasized so much about a wedding like that. "I was the one that insisted we come here."

"And where would you be if you hadn't?" she asked tartly. "In a run-down motel wondering if Dean had scammed enough credit to pay the hospital bill? They'd've probably caught on by now, you know. Probably even be pushing to put him in long-term, warehousing him with the other vegetables. They wouldn't know what was wrong with him, let alone how to fix it, and they'd write him off in a heartbeat."

"He's always taken care of  _me_ ," Sam said softly. "God, Kellie, he'd  _kill_  himself to make sure I was okay. He's  _tried_ , before. And now—I did this to him, and I can't fix it."

"How exactly did you make the blocks fail?" she asked, entirely too reasonably. "Because if you've got the power to break a spell that  _Willow_  cast, you're in the wrong line of work."

"I had a vision—"

"Can you say that you would never have found your way here otherwise? Ever?"

"No," he admitted.

"Slayers are coming in more contact with hunters every year, now that the Watchers aren't out to keep Slayers a secret. It's just dumb luck you've never met one before. Sooner or later, you would have, and with those visions of yours, you'd've been referred to a Watcher. Chances are you would have run into them eventually, and so much—" She snapped her fingers. "—for Dean's blocks. Better that it happened now. Nobody handles a broken spell better than the witch who cast it."

Magic. Spellwork. That was half the problem; it was illogical, nothing at all like the rituals he'd handled all his life, and he just couldn't wrap his mind around it. "I just don't understand it," he confessed. "Willow's answered every question I had, and I  _still_  don't understand what's going on. Why it makes him sick like this."

"Magic'll do that to you. Hell, I'm a Slayer and I've  _studied_  this crap and I don't get half of it." She gave him a grin. "That's what happens when you're the muscle of the operation and not the brains."

_Dean says I_ am _the brains._  "I just don't understand why she couldn't just erase the fake memories. I know it would be harder, but she traveled through  _time_ , it's not like she doesn't have the power—"

"You really  _don't_  understand this, do you?" she asked, but there was gentleness behind the words. "The memories Willow made aren't  _fake_ , Sam. They're just as real as the others.  _Constructed_ , sure, but saying they're not real—" She stopped, obviously searching for a good explanation. "It's like a natural gemstone, versus a synthetic one. They're chemically the exact same material. Neither is more or less  _real_  than the other. The memories Willow made—call 'em the synthetic ones—they  _make_  Dean. They're at his core. Everything he is, everything Dean ever  _has_  been, ever since Willow gave you to your daddy, is in relation to the synthetic memories. Without those, he's not your brother. He's not  _anybody_. You'd lose him more completely than you would if he died."

A shiver of cold ran up his spine, and he felt suddenly alone, more than ever. Even at Stanford, he'd known that Dean was just a phone call away. Dean was his security net, and what Sam would do without him, he didn't know. He didn't  _want_  to know.

Ever.


	32. Chapter 32

Sam woke up with someone curled practically on top of him, and that wasn't right. Jess could be a wild sleeper, prone to kicking, stealing the blankets, and occasionally even pushing him out of bed entirely when she was stressed, but she was  _not_  one for sleeping in a pile.

 _Wait a minute_. His brain felt fuzzy—about as fuzzy as his teeth, come to think of it. Except that thinking hurt and his teeth didn't.

It couldn't be Jess. Jess was gone. Had been gone for years.

He raised his head—only an inch or so before the pain was too much, but it was enough to see brown hair instead of blonde. That, with the headache, reminded him. Kellie.

They were both dressed, so he didn't think anything had happened beyond sharing the bed. Not that he'd  _remember_ , the way his head felt. This was his second hangover in three weeks. If— _when_  Dean found out, he was going to laugh his ass off. Sam would  _never_  hear the end of it.

Kellie raised her head and blinked blearily at him. "Hi," she said, yawning—and then realized abruptly that she was on top of him. "Sorry," she said, and rolled off. "Musta mistaken you for my trout."

Sam blinked. Was he still drunk? "Your  _what?_ "

"Trout." She sat up and fought with the pillows a moment, then leaned over the opposite side of the bed. "Oh, there he is." A five-foot-long pillow made to look like a rainbow trout slapped Sam in the face with its tail fins. "Name's Rainy. I usually sleep on him. Musta fallen off the bed when I was makin' sure you didn't break your neck getting'  _into_  bed."

 _I am in bed with a woman who kills vampires for a living and who sleeps with a giant trout. And I am extremely hung over._  Oh, yeah. This was going to follow him for  _years_. The fact that they hadn't done anything would just  _add_  to the teasing.

_If he wakes up._

Kellie had curled around—well,  _clamped herself around_  would be more accurate; she was holding on to that thing for dear life—the trout and was already asleep again. Sam shook his head in amazement, and then regretted it.  _Drugs. I need drugs._

He eased himself out of bed, swearing softly at the pain—hangover headache, black eye headache, bump on the head headache, bruised rib and neck and ass—and made his way to the bathroom. Rummaging through Kellie's medicine cabinet proved pointless; she didn't even have aspirin. Even the guest rooms in Buffy's place had painkillers stocked.

No, wait. He remembered—very dimly, somewhere after  _Love Actually_  but before they started mocking  _Deep Blue Sea_ —Kellie saying that she didn't get a lot of guests, and they usually slept in the living room. Maybe she kept it in the kitchen, where it would be easier for them to reach.

The hunch proved right. He downed four ibuprofen dry, then looked through cabinets until he found a glass to fill with water. Next up: the phone. If he could remember Buffy's number. Maybe....

The phone hung next to the door to the living room, and, just as he'd hoped, it had a list of numbers beside it. Buffy's was at the top. Between the blurred vision and general post-alcohol shakiness, it took him three tries to punch it in correctly.

"Hello?"

"Will? It's Sam—"

"Oh, hi, Sam. He's fine."

"How—"

"You're kind of predictable." He smiled at that. "We're taking care of him. Don't worry."

"I'll be—"

"Sam, if you come back before Sunday afternoon, Buffy is going to tell the babies that you like teenagers. And I'll tell Nora that she's your type."

"But—"

"Go Christmas shopping. Let Kellie give you the nickel tour of Cleveland for Jaded Tourists. Just— You need some time for yourself, Sam. Take it."

"I can't—"

"You can call as often as you want, okay? Just—take a few days off."

 _But I haven't_ done _anything._  "Are you—"

"Extremely sure. Let me talk to Kellie a minute."

"She—um—" He hesitated, glancing toward the bedroom. "She's wrapped around a fish at the moment."

"You met Rainy?" Her voice went from concerned to teasing in a heartbeat. "Oh,  _my_."

"Not like that," he corrected quickly, feeling like he was talking to Dean. "Her couch is too short."

"Well, if you weren't such a freakin'  _giant_."

If it wouldn't hurt so much, he'd hit his head against the wall.

 

***

Willow pressed the disconnect button on the phone and slumped in her chair, rubbing the new bruise on her jaw. Dean muttered in his delirium, but was otherwise quiet for the first time since Sam had left. He'd been okay for the first couple of hours, but when Sam didn't return....

Buffy was curled up beside him, dead to the world. Her voice had been all that he responded to, and that not well, only when the sedatives were kicking in. It had been after sunrise before she finally fell asleep—before Dean finally calmed down enough  _for_  her to sleep—one hand resting protectively on Dean's arm.

He'd had four doses of sedatives in the last twelve hours, enough to knock out a vampire, and he was still just  _barely_  unconscious. Willow didn't dare give him any more, not for another twelve hours, and she couldn't use magic on him, because there was no telling how even a simple sleep spell would interact with the chaos in his mind.

Priss was curled in her lap—Dean had been too violent for the cat to stay near—and she absently ran her hand down the cat's back. There was no way Dean could have known that Sam was leaving. That decision had been made after Sam's attempt to visit, and Sam hadn't been allowed back into the room before he left. No one had mentioned it in Dean's hearing. But somehow, he knew. Willow had no doubts that this—this episode was related to Sam's extended absence. It made her wonder just how strong the bond between the brothers had become. Had Dean somehow  _sensed_  that Sam was gone?

Better question: had  _she_  done that, or had Winchester? Alex and Liam had never been particularly close—most days they'd hated each other, especially after the first time Alex threatened Priss—but without the memory of their previous lives to bias them, raised by a hunter as close to the edge as John Winchester had been, with nothing but him and each other....

" _SAMMY!_ "

"Shit," she muttered, jumping out of her chair and dumping Priss on the floor. Buffy was awake in a second, pinning Dean down as he thrashed against the restraints, screaming for his brother. He wasn't making much sense, but then, he never did; it sounded like he was begging Sam to come back. "Buffy, I can't—"

"Yeah," Buffy managed, "I know.  _Dean!_ " she screamed, right in his ear. "It's okay, Sammy's fine—just calm down— _shit!_ " Slayer instincts weren't quick enough for her to avoid Dean's knee, which got her in the leg hard enough to bruise, despite the restraints. " _Dammit, Dean, snap out of it!_ "

He finally quieted, one hand clenched hard on hers. "Tell him you didn't mean it," he murmured, "tell him he can come back, you stupid son of a bitch, please, just tell him...."

"He'll come back," Buffy soothed. Neither she nor Willow had any idea who Dean kept begging, or who the missing  _he_  was. They didn't really need to know. "He'll come back, Dean, I promise, he will—"

"'Sposed to take care of him."

"And you will, as soon as you get better—"

"Can't leave...not safe...."

 _I think he's talking about Sam_ , Willow realized. When Sam left for college? Had it been that hard for him to break away from Winchester?

Dean drifted back into his restless doze. "So," Buffy said wearily, easing away from him, "how's Sam?"

"He met Rainy."

"On the first date? Damn."

"He said the couch was too short."

"You think there  _is_  a couch that's not too short for him?"

Willow laughed. "Probably not."

Buffy smiled, sadly, absently. "He's getting worse, isn't he?"

Willow hesitated. She hated to shatter hopes, but.... "Doc says that if it doesn't break by New Year's, his chances go down to almost nothing."

"That's not—"

"Buffy, Doc's an optimist."

"What does that mean?"

"That...." She stopped, trying to figure out how to say this. "Dean might already be gone. We need to start preparing Sam for the worst."

"No!" Buffy shouted. Dean flinched away from the sound, and Willow and Buffy both tensed, waiting to see if it sparked another fit. "I am  _not_  telling Sammy that his brother's dying," Buffy said firmly, though more quietly. "Not until there's no hope left."


	33. Chapter 33

There was someone here who shouldn't be.

Now, if he only knew where  _here_  was, that would be useful information.

It was gray and foggy, but familiar for all that. There was music playing, dim and subdued, just out of mind's reach; he recognized the familiarity but not the song. Styx? Kansas? Not enough drums for Metallica, and besides, it sounded pre-80s.

Dean glanced down at himself. Boots, jeans, shirt, jacket, amulet, ring. Wherever here was, it had at least dressed him normally. Way better than hospital scrubs.

Wait a second. Why had he suddenly thought of hospital scrubs? Who would wear hospital scrubs in an out-of-body experience?

Jesus Christ, there it went again.  _What_  out-of-body experience? He hadn't  _had_  any—

Instinct made the back of his neck prickle. He whirled around, reaching for a gun that wasn't there.

It was another man, similar height and build, but dressed in a black suit and shirt, no tie, non-shiny black shoes. Somewhere above  _schoolteacher_  and below  _bank teller_ , then. Dean's eyes focused on a glint of gold. An amulet on a cord around the man's neck.

_His_  amulet. The amulet that no one he'd ever met had been able to identify.

Dean jerked his gaze up to the stranger's face.

The face that stared back at him was not  _quite_  a mirror image. The hair was a bit longer, a tad darker; the eyes a touch more green; the expression not as permanently cynical. It was like looking at an identical twin, he supposed, after living enough years that their different experiences had subtly changed them. "Son of a  _bitch_ ," he breathed. "Liam."

"Dean," the other man replied evenly, in his own voice.

"This—" Dean looked helplessly around, hoping for some sign that this was a prank. "This is fucking  _weird_."

"Agreed."

"How— Oh, wait, I get it. This—" he gestured to the gray fogginess "—is supposed to be the inside of my head, and we're confronting each other to see who wins. This is all some psychological bullshit hallucination, isn't it?"

"Hm." Liam covered the distance between them in one stride and slapped him. Hard.

" _Hey!_ " Dean shouted, shoving him away.

"Feel like a hallucination?"

God, the sarcasm in that voice—it sounded  _just_  like him. "Damn, that—" He choked down the words.

"That was something you might have done?" Liam asked quietly.

"Yeah."

"That's because I  _am_  you," came the sharp, impatient answer. "We're not separate beings, Dean. Your insistence that we are is what made this so hard. It's why we can't wake up."

"Wake up?"

"Physically speaking, our body is currently unconscious in Mom and Willow's apartment. Mostly. We have the occasional delirious fit."

_Mom and Willow?_  No, wait. It would be only natural for Liam, or the Liam part of him, or Liam's memories, or  _whatever_  the hell this thing was, to refer to Buffy as  _mom_. "Our?" Dean asked weakly.

"Appearing as what we might have been was the only way to get you to understand our situation."

_Might have been._  Of course. Liam, born to a Slayer, with a gift for languages and love of books and sheer adoration of Giles, would have been a Watcher.

"Why?" Dean asked. If Liam really was him—or he was Liam— _God_ , this made his head hurt—he'd understand the question.

"The only way for us to wake—the only thing that will keep us from  _dying_ —is for you to accept the memories."

Dean frowned. "What memories?"

"Mine. Yours. All of them. When you wake up, you are going to know everything I did. Remember everything I've done. Remember everything  _you've_  done."

"I already—"

"No. You don't."

The grayness around them writhed, contracted.

_He was wearing hospital scrubs in an empty hospital room, facing a pretty brunette who spoke of dying and leaving and a warrior's honorable death—and then black smoke billowed from an air duct, poured itself down her throat. Her eyes blazed golden. "Today's your lucky day, kid," she snarled, putting her hand on his forehead, and pain seized him and hurled him back into his body—he was choking, there was plastic in his throat, blocking his airway, he couldn't breathe, couldn't_ breathe _—_

Dean reeled backwards. Liam caught him by the arms, held him upright. "The reaper," Dean whispered. "The demon. I— How—"

"We were born with a perfect memory. Willow's spells dulled it. But everything that happened was recorded. With the block shattered, you'll remember everything."

"It's just memory—"

Liam snorted. " _Just_  memory. Memory isn't pictures and words, Dean. It's emotions. Pain, hatred, joy, love. For most people, memories fade. It keeps them sane."

"And you? Um—I mean—us?"

"I never knew anything different. From the beginning, I remembered. Everything. And you'll have to accept that. Remembering everything. Forever. As clear as the day it happened."

"That's not memory," Dean snapped. He'd seen people who remembered too much, old hunters and Dad's Marine buddies and even a handful of traumatized victims over the years. "That's—that's just  _wrong_. That's not how it works!"

"Not for me. Not for  _us_."

Memory swirled around them, a vortex of emotions, images and words—and all, every one of them, things Dean wanted badly to forget.

The feel of a hundred thousand volts.

The impact as a semi slammed into the Impala.

The sluggish beating of a damaged heart.

Claws destroying him from the inside out.

Watching Sammy walk away.

Watching Dad die.

"This is what it will be if you wake up," Liam said softly. "Memory, always, playing in the back of your head. Everything you ever wanted to forget. Everything you ever  _managed_  to forget. My memories, your memories, the memories Willow made for you.  _Constant_."

"That's not natural!" The thought of always remembering  _exactly_  what it felt like to wake with that tube down his throat, the pain and horror and Sammy's voice torn between joy and panic—

"Neither are we," came the calm response.

" _I don't want to remember!_ " Dean shouted, and it echoed around them like they were in a cave. "I already remember too much!"

"You remember  _nothing!_ " Liam shouted back, right in his face, startling Dean so badly that he actually stepped back. "You're a goddamned  _coward_ , Dean! All you ever do is  _run_  from your memories! It's all you've  _ever_  done! Trying to hide in hunting and taking care of Sammy and screwing every woman who said yes and pretending you don't remember every last name!"

"Because it fucking  _hurts!_ " Dean screamed. "And I don't  _like_  pain because I'm not some half-demon  _freak_  like you!"

Liam laughed. "You're  _exactly_  like me," he snarled, "except that I have the courage to  _face_  my memories!"

"I can face them! I just don't want to! Nobody would!"

Liam glared. Did yellow flicker across his eyes, or was that just Dean's imagination? "Then we die," he said, "unless you find your backbone." He turned and walked away, fading into the mist, leaving Dean stranded with their memories.


	34. Chapter 34

Pounding on the door at an absurdly early hour, even for  _him_ , jerked Sam out of the soundest sleep he'd had in ages. "What?" he yelled.

Buffy poked her head in and switched on the light, blinding him. "It's Christmas morning, silly. Come on, time for presents!"

Sam groaned. "I'm not a—"

"I never got a Christmas with you two. Now you have to make up for it. Come on, Sammy."

"But—"

"Don't make me carry you."

"Lemme get dressed," he grumbled, and she closed the door. He pushed himself out of bed, gave his pillow a longing look, and forced himself to move. Even when there  _had_  been presents, he and Dean hadn't gotten up early. They got up early every day for training. Sleeping in was the Christmas treat they looked forward to.

The living room was a riot of decorations, all clashing, that couldn't be fully appreciated except in the dark of Christmas morning: Christmas and Hanukkah and Solstice and he wasn't sure what else. Christmas lights were everywhere, all the candles in Will's silver dragon menorah were lit even though the last night of Hanukkah had been a week ago, and he was pretty sure the enormous hunk of unlit wood in the cardboard fireplace was supposed to be a Yule log. There was a Christmas tree, of course—he'd put the star on it when they put it up, since that task  _always_  fell to the tallest person in the house, no matter where you lived—but in addition to Santas and reindeers and angels there were miniature menorahs and dreidels, snowflakes and stars, candy canes and environmentally-safe tinsel and recycled-paper ornaments.

_Maybe I should just be glad Ramadan wasn't in December this year,_  he thought, threading his way around stacks of presents to the chair that looked like it could hold him most comfortably. Who were all these presents  _for?_  Surely they didn't buy for  _all_  the Slayers!

"These are yours," Buffy said, and began stacking presents at his feet. Lots of presents. Lots and  _lots_  of presents. And a homemade stocking, far too well-made to have been put together by either Buffy or Willow, that was big enough to double as a boot and was stuffed full of enough candy to keep Dean high for  _months_.

"You can't be serious," he said, looking desperately at Willow, hoping she'd be the voice of reason.

"She had to make up for lost time, and I did too, and the Watchers got you something, and the babies  _had_  to get something to justify their crushes—" She laughed evilly at Sam's groan. "Besides, I heard from  _somebody_  that John didn't always remember the holidays."

"Well, no, but this is ridiculous!"

"Oh, shut up and open your presents," Buffy ordered, as eager as a little kid. If he didn't, she probably would.

"You first," he said, and pulled her gift out of his pocket.

She accepted the small box with a confused look on her face. "You didn't have to—" She ripped the ribbon off and pried the box open. "I don't get it," she said, removing the silver ring. The two stones set in it glittered green and red.

"It's a mother's ring," he explained. "Those are our birthstones. Garnet for Dean, emerald for me."

"I—" She looked at him, at the ring, at Willow, then back at Sam with tears in her eyes. "Thank you," she whispered, sliding it onto her finger. "Thank you so much!" She threw her arms around him in a hug that nearly cracked his ribs.

"Ow!"

"Sorry!" She let go as if she'd been burned, and he smiled. "Now. Entertain Mama and open your presents."

He shook his head, but she threw a box at him, and he started unwrapping.

New sneakers. New boots. Five pairs of new jeans. A truly scary amount of underwear. From the babies, enough T-shirts to keep him in clean laundry for a week, a new jacket, and socks.  _Thirty-five pairs_  of socks. The non-clothing gifts were even more impressive: a couple of heavy-duty research books from the Watchers, an assortment of protective charms and software for translation and tracking magical cycles from Willow, and from Buffy an engraved knife, a new duffel bag, a new weapons bag, a handful of gift cards to various nationwide stores, and—of all the things—a book of puzzle games for long car rides. And this was just  _his_  loot. Buffy had been carrying a double armful of brightly-wrapped boxes into Dean's room when Sam had come out of his room. God knew what the babies had thought were appropriate gifts for an unconscious man, especially when they were all trying to impress his brother.

"There's one more present," Buffy said.

_Another one?_  "Don't you think you're going a little overboard?" Sam asked, but when she glared at him, he pushed himself to his feet anyway.

"Compared to the babies? No way." She tugged at his arm—politely, considering they both knew she was fully capable of pulling him down the hall and damn the extra height he had on her. He laughed, thinking of the thirty-five pairs of socks, and let himself be led down the hall to—

To Dean's room.

"You have to promise me one thing," she said quietly, "and that's if he starts talking about anything that's obviously Summers and not Winchester, you come out  _immediately_. Can you do that?"

"You're not going in?"

"Wouldn't be much of a present if I did, would it?" She opened the door and waved Kalani (a devout Buddhist, except for the Slaying, so Christmas wasn't a big obligation for her) out of the room. "In fact, I'm even going to make it  _completely_  safe. C'mon, Priss." She picked up the cat. "Yeah—now I remember why Giles used to say she was a reincarnated otter," she added, arms full of angry, squirming feline, and raced for the door. "Merry Christmas, Sam— _ow!_  You little—"

He closed the door just in time; Priss got loose and hit with a  _thunk_ , followed by a yowl of sheer misery. "Take that," he muttered, and slid the chair closer to Dean's bed. He looked better today—if by  _better_  you meant he wasn't tied down or screaming. He was just  _there_ , looking as peaceful as a coma victim could.

_Fuck_ , was  _that_  ever the wrong thought.

Peace was wrong for Dean. Even when he was healthy, he tossed and turned and knotted himself into so many bizarre positions to sleep that Dad had occasionally called him "the human pretzel." He had to be at rock bottom to sleep without moving, and that usually involved a week without sleep and a dozen hunts in a row. Unless, of course, he was delirious, but before this, that hadn't happened all that often.

"Merry Christmas, Dean," he said softly. Priss' yowling was starting to fade, or get distracted; maybe her Christmas stocking full of catnip was working. "They let me in to see you. Without anybody watching. Not even that damned cat of yours."

He stopped short. Priss wasn't  _Dean's_  cat, she was  _Liam's_ —but Sam could remember all times he'd dragged Dean to pet stores to see the puppies only to watch Dean drawn (every time) to the kittens, and the way Dean always seemed to find some scraps to feed the strays whenever they stayed in one place long enough. "You must have remembered her, somehow," he said, a little unnerved by the realization that, all this time, part of Liam had been materializing. How many more were there, little quirks that even  _Dean_  didn't know came from somewhere else? "No wonder you never would help me try to convince Dad we needed a dog. You wanted a  _cat_." He shook his head in amazement. "Dude, when you wake up—"

"Sam?"

He froze. The smart thing to do would be to yell for Buffy, to get out of reach before Dean saw him and had another fit—

But he'd said  _Sam_ , not  _Alex_... Maybe,  _just_   _maybe_...

"It's me, Dean, I'm here." He reached over and gave Dean's hand a squeeze.

Dean's eyes opened—slowly, as if he were fighting drowsiness, but that was hardly surprising given the sheer amount of drugs they'd been pumping into him. Once he got them open, he looked at Sam blearily, like he couldn't focus. "Sammy?"

_Oh, God, please—_  "Yeah, Dean, it's me."

Dean frowned, and his eyes crossed, as if he were trying to look at the tip of his nose. "What the  _fuck_  is in my nose?" he demanded groggily.

Relief manifested as laughter, laughter and tears, and Sam pulled Dean half out of bed and into a hug. " _Buffy!_ " he yelled. " _Willow! He's awake!_ "

"Dude, that's my ear you're yelling in."

"I know—"

"Sammy."

"Yeah?"

" _Let go of me._ "

"Oh. Sorry." He lowered Dean carefully back into the bed, back onto the pillows. Dean muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "mother hen."

The door slammed open, and Buffy and Priss tried to kill each other for the right to get back into the room first. "Dean!" she shouted. "Will! He's awake! Call Doc!" She shoved Sam out of the way and gave Dean another hug.

" _People!_ " Dean protested, trying to squirm away. "Quit hugging me!"

"Sorry." Buffy let go. "I—it just— Hey, I bet you're thirsty. Are you thirsty?"

"Very."

"I'll be right back." She kissed him on the cheek and scurried out of the room.

"Christ, I'm out for a couple of days and you guys—"

Sam reached over and smacked his hands before he jerked the feeding tube loose. "It's Christmas, Dean."

Dean shot him a look. "It is not."

"I was in here by myself because it's my Christmas present." He glanced around the room. "Look over there. Those are your presents."

Dean followed Sam's finger. " _Son_  of a  _bitch_ ," he snarled. "It—that means—"

"Three months, give or take."

" _Jesus_."

Sam nodded. "And—while you were out—the DNA tests—"

"No," Dean said flatly.

Sam frowned. "What?"

"I don't care. I am  _not_  wearing identical outfits."

Sam blinked, then laughed. "I don't think it's a requirement, Dean."

" _And_  I'm still older. Remember that."

"Of course."

"And quit grinning. You look like a clown." Sam only grinned wider. "Where's my necklace?" Dean asked. He was starting to get cranky.

Sam started looking through the stuff on the nightstand, and finally found Dean's jewelry in the top drawer. "Careful, don't get it hung—"

"There's an IV port in my neck," Dean announced, discovering it with his fingers.

"Yes, there is," Sam replied, as solemnly as he could manage, trying his best not to laugh. "Don't look under the blanket."

Of course, that was exactly what Dean did, and he actually blushed. "What have you people been  _doing_  to me?"

"You've been unconscious, Dean, it's not like you could take care of yourself," Buffy said, setting a pitcher of water and a clean glass on the nightstand. "And we couldn't put you in the hospital. So we hired a nurse."

Dean perked up at that. "Pretty?"

Sam chuckled. "If you like blue hair."

"Old?" Buffy gave him a glass of water, and he drained it and didn't even complain that it wasn't coffee.

"No. Just blue-haired. Possibly not of this dimension."

Dean blinked at him. And then yawned. "I'm sleepy."

"That's from the drugs. Just go with it." Buffy glanced at Sam, then back at Dean. "I'll go make sure Willow doesn't tell Max to rush over here. They probably have their own presents to open."

"Uh-huh." Dean yawned again. "Sammy—"

"It'll be sleep this time, Dean. Not delirium." Dean nodded, and reached for the pitcher; Sam grabbed the glass before Dean managed to pour water all over both of them. "You could've just asked."

"Not my style." He drank two more glasses before finally settling back into his pillows. Priss had crawled back into the bed at some point, and now she settled herself on Dean's chest, purring so loudly that Sam could hear it from here. Dean absently started petting her; it looked almost habitual, like he'd always had that cat, like they'd always slept together.

"Dean—"

"Yeah, Sammy?"

Sam took a deep breath and mentally braced himself. "Are you Dean, or are you Liam?"

Dean looked at him—just  _looked_ , his eyes dark, his expression unreadable. He might be composing a scathingly sarcastic retort; he might be preparing to burst into tears. Sam just couldn't  _tell_ , and that scared him.

"I'm your brother," he finally said, "and that's all that matters."


	35. Chapter 35

It took some doing, but Buffy and Willow finally pried Sam away from Dean's side later on Christmas afternoon, so that they could go to Max's for dinner, the way they'd planned, with Kalani keeping an eye on Dean. He didn't make the best company, and she was reasonably sure he ate a plastic cherry without realizing that the centerpiece wasn't real fruit, but at least it was the nice kind of distraction, not the increasing despair of the last few weeks. Making sure he got some sleep when they got back home was even easier; Will whacked him with the sleep-spell again, and he was so drowsy he didn't even fight when Buffy steered him to his own bed, though he did argue a bit. She pretended not to understand any of his increasingly slurred words.

Buffy took the night watch, but the long day took its toll; she was dozing in the comfy chair when Dean groaned. She was awake and across the room before his eyes opened. He squinted against the light. "Buffy?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"Thirsty," he said, his voice rough.

"I bet." She poured him a glass of water; he drank that and another before he finally fell back in the pillow and looked around like he was actually awake. "Better?"

"Yeah." He reached up to scratch his nose, and she nearly laughed at his expression when his fingers found the feeding tube. "Sam said—"

"Sam said no such thing, and besides, Sam's not the nurse. She'll be in tomorrow, but Max said she'd probably say it stays in until we're sure you can eat."

"Bring me something and I'll—"

"Easy, Dean. You have to start slow, or you'll hurt yourself." He muttered something—a little muffled because of the tube, but Buffy was pretty sure she recognized the emotion behind it. "How does broth sound? Max said it'd probably be all right if we stuck to clear liquids."

"Will there be a steak at the bottom of the bowl?"

"No."

"Terrible."

"Your choices are chicken or beef."

He made a face. "That's not food."

"The quicker you start eating it, the quicker we can get you that steak."

He sighed. "Chicken."

"I'll be right back.  _Don't_  move."

"But—"

"Dean Winchester, if you try to get out of that bed, so help me, I'll beat you up." He looked sufficiently cowed by the threat that she felt safe leaving him alone for a few minutes.

She checked on him while the broth was heating, and noticed that he was pale and breathing a little harder than he should be.  _Good Lord. He's as predictable as Giles._  "I  _told_  you to stay in bed."

"So I'm a sucky patient," he grumbled.

She snorted. "You were a sucky patient three months ago. Now you're  _impossible_."

"Thanks."

Buffy laughed. "Stay in bed this time, or I won't let you feed yourself."

"You wouldn't."

She gave him her best maternal glare, and she could have sworn that he wilted a little. A  _very_  little. And he'd recovered completely by the time she brought back a tray with a bowl of broth and a pitcher of ice water. "Eat slowly," she ordered. "It might come back up."

"That's reassuring." He glared at the glass, then added, "You know, I think vodka counts as clear liquid."

"Nice try." She helped him up long enough to shove some extra pillows behind him, then set the tray carefully in his lap and poured a glass of water to go along with the broth. "Eat."

It took him a couple of tries to get his fingers to work, and his hand shook even then, but he applied himself to the broth with a determination that reminded her of—well, her. He wasn't going to give her any reason to feed him. Proud little brat.

He managed to finish half the bowl, and downed a couple more glasses of water, which was more than Max had said would be a good sign. "Hurts to swallow around this damn thing," he grumbled, slamming the spoon down.

"There's a reason people don't walk around with them for fun," Buffy said pleasantly, earning a glare and muttered comment as she took away the tray and set it on a chair. He closed his eyes, suddenly pale; his expression made her wonder if the broth was going to reappear. "Need a trash can?"

He shook his head. "Just dizzy—"

"Back to bed, then." She pulled pillows from behind him so he could lie back down. His color started coming back immediately. "Dean, I have to ask—"

"You want to know how much I remember." She nodded. "I remember being Liam as clear as I remember being me. Everything."

"You didn't—"

"Tell Sam? No. But he already knows."

"We haven't—"

"He asked me if I was Liam."

"Shit." On the bright side, that meant the chances of Sam's blocks breaking were lower, assuming she'd understood Will's explanation properly. "Are you okay? With—with remembering all that?"

He didn't answer immediately. His hand went to his throat, looking for the necklace; his fingers found the cord and followed it down to the talisman. "Part of me says that Dad gave this to me," he said finally, "after we started hunting. But it was Willow. On the trip to New York. Before—before she erased everything."

"Yes."

"He loved you so much. He didn't understand what was happening."

Tears stung her eyes. "I know."

"Why didn't you let m— _him_  stay in London?"

"You were twins. A lot of people thought— Just because you hadn't shown any signs of power, it didn't mean you didn't have it. It could just mean you'd take longer. Be more powerful. Giles—" Her voice broke on the memory. "Giles was one of them. We lived with him. I couldn't protect you from him. If—if he'd just left you alone, Willow would have never done what she did."

"You would have let him kill—" He hesitated, as if he almost said a different name—the same way she and Willow had been tripping over references to the twins since Dean and Sam's arrival. "Alex."

"Yes," she whispered, unable to meet his gaze. Willow, Xander, Giles—they all  _knew_  that horrible reality, but they never  _spoke_  it. It had haunted her every day since Willow took the twins away; what kind of mother would kill one child to save the other, even if killing that child might save the world? Sacrificing a sister, a lover, a friend—that was different. Still painful, but different.

To betray your own  _child_...

Dean's hand closed on hers. Startled, she looked up, and saw an understanding in his eyes that frightened her. "It's okay," he said softly. "You do what you have to do."

"Would you sacrifice Sam?"

He didn't answer immediately, the way he would have before this—and then was saved from having to answer by Priss, who chose that moment to headbutt Dean in the face, demanding attention; he chuckled and reached to scratch her behind the ears. "Hi, Priss."

"We never told you her name."

"I named her, didn't I?" He sighed. "At least that explains why I always wanted a cat. Dad thought I was crazy. So did Sam."

"Didn't stay in one place long enough?"

"Dogs are guards. Cats are familiars."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I think John was a little nuts."

"Damn—" he yawned "—straight. Why am I sleepy? I've been—"

"You've been delirious, not asleep. And there's still some drugs in your system. You'll be sleeping on and off for a few more days. But it'll be real sleep."

"Good," he said, closing his eyes. Priss crawled up on the pillow and curled up so close to his head that he was practically inhaling her whiskers. "Sammy—"

"He's asleep. He stayed here until we had to go to dinner, and we had to drag him out of here then. He'd be in here now, except that I had Will spell him. He'll be in here when you wake up."

"That's good," he murmured again, and was asleep.


	36. Chapter 36

Sam expected that they'd have to tie Dean down to keep him from charging out of the house and back on the road, and he was  _almost_  right. Dean grumbled and whined and tried to get out of bed every time he thought no one was watching—but the fact that he fell flat on his face when he did try seemed to make him rethink his stupidity. Sam hoped that was all it was. He wouldn't know what to do with a brother who had some common sense.

And now that Dean was awake and in control of his own conversations, Sam got to take his share of taking care of Dean, which meant  _he_  was dealing with all that whining. The removal of the feeding tube and IV port helped Dean's mood considerably, but the catheter was still a forbidden topic, Dean was still grumbling about the liquid diet, and God help you if you said the words  _sponge bath_ , as that job fell strictly to Corinna. She was immune to both charm and bitching, and she had no problems administering a good smackdown (verbal or otherwise) if Dean got  _too_  cranky. She only came in the early mornings, though; the 10-5 shift was Sam's. "Making up for lost time," Buffy had pointed out, with an evil little smile, and she'd promptly gone to bed, so she could get back to her normal Slaying routine. Sam supposed it was only fair, considering that he'd made a horrible worried relative of a patient.

Fair, maybe, but annoying.

Corinna said that it was good for Dean to sit up for as long as he could stand it, supported at first, so that was the first distraction Sam used when he found himself entertaining violent thoughts. "You think you can sit up?"

Dean pushed himself up. "Of course I—" He went white. "Um. Maybe—" He fell back onto the pillow. "Son of a  _bitch_. I've never seen a room spin like that."

"You were supposed to try it gradually."

"What difference does—"

" _Dean_. You've been flat on your back for three months. Your heart's not used to maintaining that kind of blood pressure. Here, lean on me." He helped Dean up and stuffed a pillow behind him, then lowered Dean back onto it. Priss, displaced by the maneuver, hissed at him, but stalked over to another spot on the bed rather than biting him. "Little bit at a time."

"Sam, if you try to feed me chicken soup, I swear, I'll shoot you."

"Uh-uh, no guns in the Slayer's house, remember?" Dean growled—actually  _growled_ —at him. "Corinna says you should be about ready for something soft. Pudding?"

"Chocolate?"

"Of course."

Dean sighed. "Well, at least it's not chicken soup."

Sam couldn't quite keep back his snicker. "I have even better news."

"The only better news I wanna hear is about a Porterhouse with my—"

"Wanna get dressed?"

Dean's expression completely— _transformed_  was the only word for it. "Oh, God, can I?"

Sam chuckled. He'd never heard Dean so excited about putting clothes  _on_. "Well, sort of. The catheter's not—"

Eagerness morphed into embarrassment. "Can we  _not_  talk about the damn catheter?" Sam grinned. "I saw that," Dean added grumpily.

"I know you did," Sam replied, in his best annoy-the-big-brother voice, and rummaged through the drawers where he'd stashed the new clothes, while Dean was still prone to dozing off mid-conversation. "Here."

Dean frowned at the shirt—the black pristine and never washed, the fabric never stretched, the design on it (an AC/DC logo, how appropriate) sharply new. "This isn't—"

"Buffy told the babies that they had to match our gifts. Whatever they spent on me, they had to spend on you. The idea was that it would persuade them not to."

"Didn't work?"

"They took up a collection, split it in half, and went clothes shopping." Dean pulled on the shirt, frowning a bit at the feel of the new cloth. As far back as Sam could remember, they'd always bought their clothes at thrift stores and yard sales; there had always been more pressing demands on the family funds. The only exceptions had been for shoes (good-quality, properly-fit shoes were required for safety's sake) and the occasional costume, like the suits they kept folded in the Impala's trunk for when they had to pretend to be official. Most of the babies, on the other hand, were from families that thought the term  _thrift store_  qualified as profanity. "All brand-new. They also bought you a bathrobe."

"A  _what?_ "

"According to Brittney—she was the ringleader—they wanted to get you stuff you could use during your recuperation. Oh, and we're both up to our ears in new socks and underwear."

"Wait a second." Dean pushed himself up a little more. "You let a bunch of  _girls_  buy me  _underwear?_ "

Sam managed not to laugh at the sheer indignation in Dean's voice. Barely. "I just gave them your sizes.  _They're_  the ones who bought the stuff. What was I supposed to do, throw the presents back in their faces?" Dean glared at him. "Really, they worked hard. These girls don't get a lot of shopping time, between school and Slaying and training."

"Underwear."

"Think of the money we'll save on buying clothes for awhile."

To his surprise, the practicality worked.

***

Dean didn't get his steak till the day after New Year's, and only then because Sam, tired of listening to him bitch about pudding and applesauce and mushy pasta, went to the store and and bought the most expensive one he could find and chased Willow and Buffy out of the kitchen and cooked the damn thing himself. Corinna made her final visit that evening, to Dean's obvious relief, with the admonition that he would have to start getting out of bed at least once a day, preferably more. Dean was only too eager to obey  _that_  order.

"Dude, quit hovering."

"I'm not—"

" _Sammy_." Dean, balancing precariously between Buffy and Kellie, glared at him. Sam had been deemed "too tall" for the task of helping Dean stay upright on this first official excursion out of bed. "Back. The fuck. Up."

"Oh."

"I don't know what you see in that boy," Dean said to Kellie. She just grinned.

"What do you—" Sam began, but Dean just grinned at him. "Never mind. I don't want to know."

" _Children_ ," Buffy chided. "Dean, how're you doing?"

"The room's not spinning."

"That's good. Will—" Willow brought over the walker that normally lived in storage downstairs; she'd said they kept it because it was cheaper for the Council to buy one than to rent one every time somebody got hurt. "Careful, now—" First Kellie, then Buffy eased away from Dean, letting him get a good grip on the walker's handles. "How's it feel?"

"Shaky."

"You're pretty much going to have to learn to walk again," Willow said. "Shaky is the least of it."

"Uh. Huh." Dean had all his attention focused on his feet, forcing them to move. He wobbled, just a bit, and Sam thought he saw one knee give way, but Dean managed to recover and actually moved forward. "Outta—the—way—"

"Where do you think you're going?" Buffy asked.

"The bathroom," Dean said through clenched teeth. "Now that I  _can_."

Sam couldn't resist. "Need any help?"

The slammed door muffled any other response Dean made.


	37. Chapter 37

Learning to walk was a pain in the ass. Especially at Dean's age.  _Especially_  with a horde of mother hens hovering over every movement.

More and more that was Buffy and Willow, and less Sam, though, and it didn't take a genius to figure out why. Dean was doing his best to throttle any mannerisms surfacing from Liam, but hell, they were older than most of  _his_  behaviors, ingrained  _way_  deeper—

There.  _Ingrained_ , for fuck's sake. Sam had no idea how lucky he was that Dean didn't sound like he'd swallowed a dictionary. He was training himself to rehearse things before he said them, all in the name of not freaking Sammy out, but it'd take time to become habit. Most of the time, he managed. The things tripping him up were subconscious, too deep for him to recognize. He needed Sam around to help remind him of who he was, of who  _Dean_  was, because Buffy and Willow didn't know him well enough, but every slip-up made Sam back away a little bit more.

And sometimes, he'd look at Sam, and the reaction he throttled was violent hatred, Liam's vengeful urge to reach over, borrow Dean's knowledge of combat, and rip Alex apart with his bare hands.

But he  _wasn't_  Alex. He was  _Sammy_.

God. What a mess.

It wasn't Sam's fault. He couldn't help that he and Alex had the same eyes. He couldn't know that the legendary Sam Winchester Patented Puppy Dog Eyes were a large part of how Alex had manipulated everyone. He'd just  _looked_  innocent, and while that shouldn't have counted for much in a household of Slayers and witches and Watchers, people who knew how innocent evil could look, it had.

Dean set tonight's light reading aside. He'd have to remember to put it back on the shelf before everybody woke up. Sammy would have a heart attack if he caught Dean reading books without pictures. For fun.

In German.

Dean knew exactly who to blame that on: Liam. God knew  _he'd_  never had the desire to read his way through a recuperation before, even when he was in school and should have been catching up on his homework. And all those books had been in  _English_. Three months ago, he hadn't known any German beyond  _gesundheit_. But no, his—alter ego? that sounded like a good, if comic-bookish, name for Liam—was a language freak. Dean could barely get through a standard exorcism without consulting the book, but Liam? He could probably banish the  _Pope_  to hell. From memory.

He sighed, threw back the blankets, wrestled on his new bathrobe, and pulled himself up, using the walker as a support. He hated the damned thing, but even he had to admit that his legs were still too weak to hold him up without help, and he needed the two-sided support of a walker instead of a slightly more dignified cane. At least at this hour, Sam wasn't hovering like a second shadow. Hopefully, he was with Kellie, having a good roll in the hay.

Priss stretched, digging her claws into the pillow he'd designated as hers, and hopped down from the bed to accompany him. He'd complain, but it wouldn't do any good—bloody cat was as—

_Son of a_ bitch _, I did_ not _just use_ bloody _as a curse word. Christ, Liam, what are you doing to my head?_

"Mrow?"

"You're as clingy as Sam," he told her, and put the book into the basket hooked over the top bar. She hopped in on top of it. "Were you a lap dog in your last life?" he asked, and she gave him another happy  _mrow_. He didn't understand why Sam didn't like her; she was as affectionate as a puppy and not as noisy. She wasn't much like a cat at all, come to think of it.

He returned the book to its shelf, and followed his nose to the kitchen. Willow was baking cookies. Dean didn't have to look; the batch she was stirring was chocolate chip, the ones in the oven were peanut butter, and the third batch, cooling on racks, was oatmeal. That was the order she always made cookies.

There were no words for how much knowing that freaked him out.

She glanced up at him. "Up late?"

"I—" He stopped, not sure exactly how to word this.

She brushed hair out of her face, getting a smudge of flour on her nose. For a second, he saw her standing in an antique-looking kitchen, swearing about the shortcomings of British grocery stores, and it seemed she was a lot taller than him. Then it was gone, and the kitchen was cozy and modern, and he was taller again. "You okay, Dean?"

He levered himself into a chair, and moved the walker so that Priss couldn't "accidentally" get into the cookie dough bowl. "Practicing walking," he lied—well, not exactly  _lied_ , it just wasn't the only reason why he was in here. "And—"

"Cookie dough?" She held out a spoonful.

Two flashes of memory collided in his head: Willow in that antique kitchen, Mom in the kitchen he remembered so well, both offering raw cookie dough on a spoon. He flinched away, trying to straighten out the mess in his mind.

"Dean?"

He accepted the spoon. "It's—just a memory." Ha.  _Just_  a memory.

"Liam's or yours?"

"Both. I think." Could he still claim his memories of Mom? Were they really his? "Why  _do_  I have both of them? Why me and—and him?"

"Because I had to use Liam's memories to make yours," she answered matter-of-factly, but she didn't meet his eyes as she stirred more chocolate chips into the dough. "Sam didn't need memories. He was too young. But you came out of the spell six years old, and six-year-olds remember things. The only way to make them real enough for you to function was to use your—I mean, Liam's—memories, and overlay them with things I took out of John's."

"Is there any way to fix it?"

She gave him a sideways look that  _both_  sets of memories told him meant bad news. "Do you  _want_  to forget Mary?" she asked softly.

" _No!_ " That came out more viciously than he intended.

"That's why. You'd remember remembering her, if that makes any sense, but the actual memories would be gone. And I don't know what that would do to you."

"So..." He absently ate cookie dough. "There's no way to fix this."

"Not that won't hurt you."

"I was afraid you were going to say that." He took another taste of the cookie dough, and tried not to flinch at the barrage of conflicting memories. "It's just—I—" He stopped, wondering if he should even try—but if he didn't say this to someone.... "Sometimes I look at him, and I don't see Sam. I see Alex. And—and—"

"I know," she said, and before he could argue, she went on, "You think Alex didn't hurt  _all_  of us, Dean? What he did to Buffy— I didn't see it at first, but when I knew you were Liam, and I looked— I could tell Sam was him. So could Buffy. It's been hard while you were sick, trying to get to know Sam without letting Alex color things." She half-smiled. "Buffy's a little jealous of Kellie, I think. Kellie didn't have the whole is-he-Alex-or-is-he-Sam thing to deal with. She can just accept him for who he is now."

"And I can't anymore."

"You will. It'll come together, Dean, you just have to give it some time." She glanced at him as she started scooping dough onto a cookie sheet. "You eat that just like Liam did," she said quietly, and turned away suddenly, as if she didn't want him to see her eyes. The timer dinged, and she opened the oven to take the peanut butter cookies out.

"Huh?"

"You take a mouthful, suck the dough off the chips, then hold the chips in your mouth until they melt. Liam...." She smiled. "He wandered into the kitchen sometimes, when I was engaged in—ah—therapeutic baking, and while I finished the cookies, he went on at length about the superiority of his cookie-dough-eating skills."

Dean swallowed the mouthful of half-melted chocolate chips—not as melted as he'd like, but hey, she'd just told him all about his favorite way to eat raw cookie dough and it kinda freaked him out. "Well, it  _is_  the best method for chocolate chip."

"Stubborn little—" She stopped, and gave him a sheepish smile. "Guess I can't call you 'little man' anymore, huh?"

"Why did you call me that in the  _first_  place?"

Willow chuckled. "Because you were the most solemn little guy. Happy, don't get me wrong, but quiet. Bookish. You were a Giles in the making, which was fine, because you  _wanted_  to be Giles. You idolized that man."

He snagged another spoonful of dough. "Liam wanted to be a Watcher."

She nodded, as if she wasn't a bit surprised. "I started teasing Buffy that you were her little Giles, and that became 'little man.'" She smiled again, a little sadly. "He tried not to show it, but he was ridiculously pleased with the whole thing. You were a son and a grandson and a nephew all in one."

"And Alex wasn't."

"Alex was...harder to love."

"Willow—"

"I don't know, Dean." She slid the cookie sheet into the oven and turned back to him. This time he was sure: there  _were_  tears in her eyes. "I don't have any answers for you. I wish I did. Because that would mean I had answers for  _me_. For Buffy. For all of us."


End file.
